<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Aperture by Eighty_Sixed</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27202280">Aperture</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eighty_Sixed/pseuds/Eighty_Sixed'>Eighty_Sixed</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Scablands [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Twin Peaks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Mild Language, Past Drug Use, Permanent Injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, Psychosis, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:48:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>46,584</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27202280</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eighty_Sixed/pseuds/Eighty_Sixed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dale finds his way back to the light.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dale Cooper &amp; Harry Truman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Scablands [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985891</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is an accompaniment to my fic Scablands. It follows the same general story, but from Cooper's POV. It is darker than the earlier fic (note the warnings in the tags), and also has some Twin Peaks weirdness that was mostly absent from the other fic. You probably need to read the other fic to understand what's going on in this one.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The light was so bright he had to shut his eyes against it. It had come so suddenly, like a lightning flash, but one that stayed lit. The fact that something unexpected had occurred froze him in place. Nothing unexpected ever happened to him anymore.</p>
<p>But now it had. It was continuing to happen, whatever it was. He could still see the bright white light through his closed eyelids. The question of whether this was a good thing or a bad thing didn’t even enter his mind. Whatever it was, it was being done to him. It was not something he had any say in. He might as well open his eyes. He always tried closing them, but that never stopped him from seeing.</p>
<p>So he opened his eyes. He was lying on his back, and the sky was above him. The sun was burning so brightly, but it was surrounded by black. Something was wrong with that picture. He remembered what skies looked like, and they didn’t look like that. No, that’s because it wasn’t the sun, it was the moon. Not even a full moon, just a crescent. How could it be so bright? He didn’t remember the moon being that bright. He blinked a few times. The moon was dimming a few notches, like his eyes were adjusting. Like he had been in the dark so long his eyes didn’t know what to do with light.</p>
<p>Now that he was no longer blinded by the moon, he could see other things above him. Stars. Trees. He remembered what those were. And he could hear things, things that were alive but he had forgotten the names of. He lay still for a moment. The ground was cold and there was a damp smell of decay. This was all new.</p>
<p>He sat up. Something really had changed. What, and how, and why, he had no idea. But if his senses could be believed, he was outside. He stood. He felt dizzy, from the change in position, and from the sudden overwhelming sense of urgency that was making his heart pound. The urgency he felt came from the certainty that this, whatever it was, would not last. The world he lived in was not one that allowed for change. There was no soil below or moonlight and tree boughs swaying above. Any moment now, those things would disappear, and he would be back where he had been. And then this strange taste of what felt, mockingly, almost like freedom, would be just another memory. Just like all the other memories that he kept hidden away like secrets, wondering whether they had ever been real at all. So before that happened, he had to act quickly. He had to do something.</p>
<p>Something, but what? His first instinct was to run, but to where? No matter where he went, he would end up back where he had started. But maybe there was something he could change. He put his hands to his face. It felt like his, the same face he had seen in thirteen blood-spattered mirrors. That was something he could change. Experimentally, he dug his fingernails into the soft skin beneath his eyes. He pressed in as hard as he could and dragged his fingers down. The pain made him gasp. It was intoxicating, to feel that sharp sensation after so long of feeling nothing at all. He wanted, with a sudden desperate longing, to feel more of it. So he dug his fingernails into his face again, deeper, and pulled down again, harder. He could feel the blood caking underneath his nails. But it wasn’t enough, he wanted more pain, more blood.</p>
<p>Dropping to his knees, he searched the ground around him with his hands. Everything was soft, all pine needles and rotting leaves and mud, but there had to be something hard, something sharp. His hand closed on a stick. Maybe that would help. He snapped it in two and dug the broken stick into his forehead, his cheek, his chin, and each time pressed it in as far as it would go, twisting it violently. That brought more pain and more blood. Dropping the stick, he surveyed his face with his hands again. It hadn’t changed enough. If he looked in a mirror now, he would still see his own face. He had to finish transforming it, destroying it, while he had the chance.</p>
<p>So he scrabbled around in the dirt again. He was nearly blinded by all the moonlight and blood in his eyes. Everything his hands encountered on the forest floor was soft and soggy. Was there nothing solid left? He crawled through the mud, searching with his hands for something that could do some real damage, despairing of ever finding it. But then he did find something. His fingers brushed against a hard object, and he picked it up and cradled it in his palm. Small, thin, smooth, but with an edge as sharp as a knife. It felt like a shard of broken glass. He held it up to the light and squinted at it through the blood. The object glittered darkly in the moonlight. It was a rock, one that formed from the tears of volcanoes, that was chipped into arrowheads and polished into mirrors. He couldn’t remember what it was called. Once, there had been someone he could ask about things like that. But now there was no one, so things had to remain nameless.</p>
<p>But no matter what the rock was called, it was a tool. Just what he needed. It was as if it had been left there just for him. He held it to his forehead. With his fingernails and the stick, he had been clawing desperately, like an animal. But now that he had the proper tool, he could be methodical about it. He held the rock delicately, like a scalpel, and began removing the skin from his face. The strips peeled away, exposing whatever was underneath. He couldn’t even feel the pain anymore. He continued to systematically remove as much of his face as he could. Now, whatever happened, he wouldn’t ever have to see that hateful grin in a blood-smeared mirror again.</p>
<p>As he started to run out of skin to remove, the thought occurred to him that he could move his rock blade just a bit lower. He held it to his throat, which he could feel pulsing with every one of his frantic heartbeats. If he pressed in, just a little, while moving the rock down, maybe he would finally be free for real. Maybe there was a way out after all, and maybe this was it.</p>
<p>Before he could decide whether he dared seek that release, new lights suddenly appeared, and new sounds. Human voices. They sounded as strange as the other living things that called to one another in the woods, the ones whose names he couldn’t remember. He saw the silhouette of the human forms approach. They froze, shining their lights in his face so that he had to close his eyes again. The newly arrivals spoke to one another. He couldn’t understand what they were saying. They were speaking English, he was sure of that, but it was like he himself couldn’t understand English anymore. Maybe the unearthly language of the place he had been was his native tongue now. He could, however, translate the tone of the voices of the people who had found him. Shock, confusion, horror. That’s what anyone would feel at the sight of him.</p>
<p>One of the people spoke into a handheld device that crackled in response. The other cautiously approached him. The person took the rock he was holding, and he let it go. Then the person put a hand on his face, as if to inspect or treat his wounds. The touch was gentle, but it was too much. He wasn’t ready for the feel of someone else’s skin against the wreckage he had made of his face. He scrambled backwards until his back was against a tree, then he started clawing at his face with his fingernails again. He wanted to rid himself of any trace of the undeserved human kindness that had been transmitted through that stranger’s touch. It burned like poison against his flesh.</p>
<p>Seeing what he was doing, the two humans reacted with alarm. One of them grabbed his arms and held them down firmly while the other locked his wrists in metal. Confinement, that was something he could understand, and it calmed him. He sat quietly while the people continued speaking to each other in their incomprehensible language.</p>
<p>Soon, more people arrived, with more lights and more voices. These were voices he knew. There was one that was sharp, like acid. Another was quiet but strong, like a bird of prey soaring effortlessly on a thermal. Another was dumbfounded and tearful. The sharp voice sounded angry about something, and in response his wrists were freed from the metal. But there was just so much sound and light now after so long with none, and his instinct was to immediately start tearing at his face again, to seek the searing comfort that the pain provided. At that, the owners of the voices put his wrists back into the metal.</p>
<p>Something was bothering him. There was another voice he expected to hear along with all these other familiar ones. A warm voice, like if sunshine made a sound. But he didn’t hear it. Why was that? He began to panic, struggling against the metal that held his wrists. Not to free himself, but just to resist the idea that had been planted in his mind, about the most sinister reason why that voice would be missing. But no, he remembered all the victims at all the thirteen mirrors. He certainly would have been forced to watch if that warm, much-missed voice had been silenced.</p>
<p>Eventually, he felt a pinprick. Someone had injected him with something. It was the kindest thing they could have done. He drifted away, to where he didn’t know.</p>
<p>He awoke to motion. He was in a brightly lit place. Surprisingly, it was still not the place he had been. He was still restrained. That was unnecessary, because he couldn’t move anyway. There was some deeper restraint that seemed to have seized him. His face was covered. They had left his eyes exposed, but he still couldn’t see anything through them other than the bright light above. The place he was in swayed gently back and forth, occasionally bumping up and down. The motion was reassuring. If he was going somewhere, that meant there was somewhere to go. He fell asleep again.</p>
<p>The next time he woke up, he had arrived somewhere. Another bright place, with an antiseptic fragrance. The place was full of people, bustling in and out of the room he was lying in, checking some things, adjusting others, most of them seeming to relate to the mess he had made of his face. He was no longer restrained, but there was someone watching him all the time, making sure he didn’t damage himself further. So he didn’t. There didn’t seem to be much point in it anyway.</p>
<p>Time passed. At least, he assumed that’s what it was doing. It had probably been doing that all along. He was led around to different places. He ate the food he was given, even though he couldn’t taste it. He let them wash him, even though he never felt clean. He took the pills they gave him. He assumed they must be for his face. There probably wasn’t any medicine they could give him for all the other things that were damaged.</p>
<p>Some of the people spoke to him. Most didn’t. He still couldn’t understand their speech. All human language was foreign to him now.</p>
<p>He couldn’t look, but he could see. Just shapes and color, like pictures taken with an out-of-focus camera. Maybe his eyes had lost the ability to focus. It had been so long since he had anything to look at. Instead, all he had been doing was trying and failing to look away.</p>
<p>Even though things had changed, it wasn’t that different from the existence he was used to. Not doing, but having done to him. Being a captive audience, just along for the ride.</p>
<p>But suddenly, things were different. “Coop,” a voice said, the warm voice he had been half-listening for. And with that word, Dale became Dale again. It wasn’t that he had forgotten his own name, it was more that he hadn’t had a use for it. It had seemed obsolete somehow, referencing something so diffuse it was hardly there. But when Harry said his name, Dale felt himself become solid and present again. Harry, who had always known how to call things by their names.</p>
<p>Then a hand was covering his own. Harry’s strong, callused hand. “Coop,” Harry repeated. Dale suddenly realized that he could understand what Harry was saying. It was the first human speech he had been able to decipher. It was as if, when he heard Harry say his name, he had finally become human again himself. A broken one, but a human all the same.</p>
<p>“It’s me, Harry,” Harry went on. “Do you – do you remember me?”</p>
<p><em>Remember you? I knew who you were when I didn’t know myself.</em> But Dale couldn’t say that. He couldn’t say anything. He could understand language again but was still incapable of generating it. He wondered if his voice was gone, if he had left it somewhere. He tried to focus his eyes on Harry. But he couldn’t do that either. He wanted to look at Harry. Even more than that, he wanted to say something, to disabuse Harry of his ill-conceived notion that he was someone that Dale could possibly have forgotten. But he was trapped in his uncooperative body, a prisoner in his own mind. His fingers even refused his commands to move, to show Harry that he was listening and trying to reach out.</p>
<p>And then Harry was gone. He was gone so abruptly that Dale wondered if maybe he hadn’t ever been there at all. Maybe, in his hopelessness, he had conjured a memory of Harry that felt more real than anything else in this strange new world. He could still feel the ghost of Harry’s touch on his hand, but there was nothing else to hold on to.</p>
<p>He could understand language now, though. Whether Harry had been real or imaginary, his presence had at least made the world more intelligible. So now Dale understood the snippets of conversation he overheard as he was led around, the greetings and commands some of the people leading him around issued him seemingly out of habit, the jangly tones of toothpaste commercials and talk-show banter on a television playing softly in the background. Now that the world had language again, it had time as well. Based on the “good night” and “good morning” and “here’s your lunch” people said to him at various times, he was able to once again track the passage of time. So he knew it was the next afternoon when someone said to him, “You have a visitor.”</p>
<p>Dale allowed himself to be led to wherever his visitor would be. He hoped, desperately, that it was Harry. He hadn’t realized he was still capable of hoping for anything.</p>
<p>It was Harry. Dale felt him squeeze his hand, then heard him say, “Hey, Coop. I’m back. Sorry about yesterday.”</p>
<p>So Harry really had been there yesterday. And now he was back. Sweet, steadfast Harry. Dale tried again to respond, to say something or at least look at Harry or return his hand squeeze. But he still couldn’t.</p>
<p>Seemingly undeterred, Harry then asked him if he wanted a cup of joe, apologizing for the lack of a fancy roast. The moment the smell of the coffee reached Dale, he was hit by a flash of memories. Long nights on stakeouts, long days poring over case files, visits to witnesses’ homes, stops in roadside diners from coast to coast. It was as if, just for a second, he could glimpse his old self.</p>
<p>Harry kindly helped him drink the coffee, even though he could have done it on his own. Somehow he could still do routine things like eating and drinking, it was just anything that involved conscious effort that eluded him. Unlike everything else he had consumed, the coffee had a flavor he could taste. Despite Harry’s apprehension about the roast, it tasted fine. But it didn’t bring him the pleasure that a good cup of coffee once had. Maybe it was because half of the joy he used to find in things was the joy of sharing them. Maybe it was just because pleasure was unattainable now.</p>
<p>But he heard Harry’s relieved laugh when he took a sip. Harry seemed to interpret his acceptance of the coffee as a sign that Dale was still himself. Dale felt guilty about misleading him by giving him that impression. But at the same time, he wanted desperately to communicate with Harry somehow. He was moved that Harry had thought to bring him coffee. So he drank the entire cup, more to show his appreciation for Harry than for his own enjoyment. As he drank, he listened to Harry talk softly. Harry’s voice was comforting, warming him from the inside just like a hot cup of joe used to.</p>
<p>All the while, Harry never let go of his hands, which were wrapped around the coffee cup. Eventually, Dale felt Harry squeeze his hand one more time. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Harry said, and the future was now once again something Dale paid attention to.</p>
<p>Even though he could now follow time based on verbal cues from the people around him, Dale still couldn’t get any visual cues about the days passing. He couldn’t focus his eyes well enough to see if light was coming from natural or artificial sources, or even to tell if there were windows in the place he was in. But as far as he was concerned, the sun rose and set with Harry’s arrival and departure every day. The visits were simultaneously comforting and agonizing. Comforting, because Harry always brought him coffee and spoke to him and generally made him feel like he was still a human being. Agonizing, because he couldn’t show his appreciation, or even his awareness, of Harry’s kindness. It was like he was underwater, and he could see the light above him. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reach the surface.</p>
<p>The first minor breakthrough happened by accident. Harry was speaking to him in his soft, steady voice. He usually sat right in front of Dale, but now he shifted to sit beside him as he spoke. Dale was, as usual, focused completely on Harry’s voice, so that he wasn’t even aware that he had turned his face to track Harry’s movements until Harry suddenly broke off from what he was saying and gripped Dale’s hands in excitement.</p>
<p>“Coop? Coop, you there?” Harry’s voice held a painful note of hope. Dale strained harder than he ever had before, but he was still submerged. He hadn’t even been trying to turn toward Harry; the movement had been instinctual, like a sunflower following the light across the sky. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he was trying too hard.</p>
<p>From then on, Dale tried to relax and just let Harry’s words wash over him whenever he came to visit. If there was a path back, he was sure the only way he would able to find it would be through the gentle flow of Harry’s voice.</p>
<p>One day, something else changed. Dale could feel that his face was different. No longer covered. He could feel the cool air against his ravaged skin. That day, when Harry came to see him, he could sense Harry’s horror even before he heard it in the conversation Harry had with a woman whose voice he recognized. Harry gave him his coffee like normal, but then he didn’t say much. He did, however, wrap an arm around Dale’s shoulder and lean against him like he couldn’t hold himself up on his own. Dale ached at his inability to provide any real support to Harry. He didn’t feel any pain himself from what he had done to his own face, or if he did he couldn’t recognize it because of the larger sea of suffering he was drifting in. But clearly, what he had done was causing Harry pain, and that made him feel like a monster.</p>
<p>Several days later, he finally managed a second minor breakthrough. Like the first, it came without any conscious effort on his part. As Harry was leaving for the day, he said, “See you tomorrow, Coop”, and squeezed Dale’s hand, like always. Dale felt a great wave of gratitude sweep over him at the assurance that Harry meant it, that he really would come back tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that, probably forever. And he found himself squeezing Harry’s hand in return. Dale could feel and hear the excitement that his gesture sparked in Harry, but once again he could get no further.</p>
<p>From then on, he could return the pressure Harry applied to his hand, and he could turn his face to follow Harry’s voice, but those were still the only ways he could tell Harry that he was listening and reaching out and trying to get back. And it was such a limited vocabulary, it was so little to build anything upon. So he almost wasn’t surprised the day Harry didn’t show up. Anyone else would have given up long ago. Harry had his job, his life, and it was long past time for him to get back to it. He had been trying to pull Dale out of the depths, but all that had happened, all that possibly could happen, was that Dale was dragging him down to drown with him. So it was much better if Harry had broken free.</p>
<p>But the day before, Harry had said that he would be back tomorrow. Dale was sure of that. And Harry’s foremost quality was that he was as dependable as gravity. So him not showing up when he had said that he would was deeply unsettling. Dale wondered if something had happened to keep him from coming. Once his mind started down that road, there was no going back. He had enough horrors stored away in his mind that possible catastrophes crouched behind every corner. It was too easy to imagine, in full color and surround sound, the full array of miseries that could befall a human being.</p>
<p>After that, he couldn’t move. The world was fading away again, as he sank deeper into the abyss. Even the vague outlines that had defined his existence, the fuzzy shapes of words and objects and time, abandoned him. Now he made no effort to surface. There was no point. If Harry had given up on him, there truly was no hope, and he might as well give up too. And if it was the alternative, that something had happened to Harry, then that was a world he had no interest in returning to. He let himself sink.</p>
<p>Then Dale felt the familiar grip of Harry’s hand squeezing his. Instinctively, he returned the squeeze. He heard Harry’s voice, sounding as if it came from a long way off, gradually resolving into language he could once again understand. He felt himself turn toward Harry, pulling himself up on the lifeline of his words. “Hey, Coop,” Harry was saying, his voice huskier than normal. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here the past couple of days. I wanted to come, but I couldn’t. But I’m back now.”</p>
<p>Suddenly, just like that, Dale could see Harry. It was as if someone had just adjusted the focus on some sort of viewing apparatus and brought the scene into sharp clarity. Harry looked older. His face was lined. His eyes were red, like he had been spending too much time crying or drinking or both, and there were dark circles beneath, like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in years. One eye had a fresh bruise around it. But now he saw that Dale saw him, and his expression brightened with hope. “Coop?”</p>
<p>“Harry.” Dale breathed the name, barely above a whisper. Harry had been the last person he had spoken to, hadn’t he? The last real person, anyway. That seemed like a thousand years ago.</p>
<p>Harry moved close. He grabbed Dale’s arms, as if ready to haul him back into the world by physical force if needed. “Coop? Are you with me?”</p>
<p>“Harry,” Dale managed to repeat, stronger this time. He could see the instant the realization hit Harry that he was really speaking, that he recognized Harry, that there was still something left of him. Harry’s eyes brimmed with tears as he embraced Dale. At first, Dale was frozen in place at the shock of his resurfacing. But then he heard Harry give a single sob, like he had been holding it in until he couldn’t contain it anymore. The sob held some unfathomable emotion, not pain exactly, more like disbelief that some long-suffered pain could possibly have an end. At that sound, Dale’s arms automatically went around Harry to return the embrace. Harry put his face against Dale’s shoulder. Dale still felt numb, disjointed, out of place. But the one thing was sure of was that he didn’t want to hear Harry sob like that. Not for anything, and certainly not for him.</p>
<p>They stayed like that for a few minutes, Dale wishing he could say or do something. Then Harry pulled away so he could study Dale like some long-lost treasure. “I’m glad you’re back, Coop,” Harry said, with such sincerity that Dale wished he could be glad about it himself.</p>
<p>A woman in a white coat came to the door of the room they were in. She shot Harry a meaningful glance, and Harry reluctantly told Dale that he had to go. But he also said he’d be back tomorrow, and now Dale knew that there would be no power on Earth that could stop him. Harry told him to eat something, and he nodded. He hadn’t realized he hadn’t been eating. Then, Harry handed him a coffee and smiled, which was by far the best thing Dale had seen in as long as he could remember.</p>
<p>As Harry left, Dale took a sip of the coffee and looked around, seeing his surroundings for the first time. It was strange that he had never stopped to wonder about where he was, but he hadn’t felt like he’d really been anywhere. Now he could see that he was in a hospital. The woman in the white coat had been his doctor, and this was his room. Not a normal hospital room. It was clearly designed for long-term stays, and there was no medical equipment in sight. A psychiatric hospital. That made sense. That was the only place someone like him belonged.</p>
<p>There was a recessed window. Late afternoon sunlight slanted through the metal slats. Outside, there were brown hills and the glint of water. He got up to get a better view. A lake. Geese were swimming on it. Clouds scurried across the sky. He watched the scene outside the window. The geese swam, the clouds drifted, shadows and light played across the hills. He had never before appreciated how much the world changed from moment to moment. He watched it change until the light had almost disappeared from the sky.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next day, Dale was escorted to a room and sat on a sofa and told to wait there for his visitor. He looked through the window at the lake. “Hey, Coop,” said Harry’s voice from behind him. He turned to look, and that made Harry beam. He had brought Dale not only coffee, but also cherry pie. Dale took a bite of the pie. Just like with coffee, the taste brought back a flood of memories. He used to love pie, of any kind, and cherry pie most of all. He could remember that he had used to find such joy in everyday things, but now he couldn’t even remember what joy felt like. The memories only showed how wide the gap was between who he had been and who he was now. But it seemed that Harry couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see how wide that gap was. He grinned as he watched Dale eat the pie, like they were back at the Double R Diner together.</p>
<p>There was a lot Dale wanted to say to Harry. But they were things he didn’t think he had the words for yet. Harry seemed to understand. He always had been so understanding. As Dale looked at Harry, he suddenly wondered how much time had passed. It didn’t make any difference to him, because he had experienced it simultaneously as a lifetime and as no time at all. But out here, time was a real thing that took its toll on those who lived it. “How long has it been?” Dale found himself asking.</p>
<p>“Five years,” Harry answered heavily. He studied Dale, as if concerned about his reaction. But Dale just nodded. He had known it had to have been at least a few years. Those years were recorded in the lines of Harry’s face, like tree rings. Based on how weary Harry looked, Dale wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been ten years, or twenty-five. It was probably for the best that he himself had no face now, because he didn’t even want to imagine what his own face would look like after the time he had served.</p>
<p>They went outside during Harry’s next visit. There was a garden, with warm sunshine and fragrant blossoms and the buzz of bees. As they walked, Dale had to stop to examine every beautiful thing he saw. He felt compelled to make sure that they were real and not some kind of optical illusion, a mask hiding something foul and rotten beneath.</p>
<p>They sat on a bench and looked at the lake through the web of the chain-link fence, crowned by barbed wire. The landscape looked utterly alien, like no place Dale had ever been before. It definitely didn’t look like Twin Peaks. It was strange seeing Harry somewhere that wasn’t Twin Peaks. In his mind, Harry was so much part of the town, and it so much a part of him, that it seemed impossible for him to even exist outside it.</p>
<p>“Where is this place?” Dale asked.</p>
<p>“It’s a hospital.” Harry hesitated, as if trying to decide whether more detail was needed, but Dale shook his head.</p>
<p>“I know. I mean, are we still in Washington?” He was still having trouble being precise with his speech.</p>
<p>“Oh. Yeah, this is Medical Lake, right outside Spokane.”</p>
<p>Dale recalled half-hearing a soliloquy Harry had given during one of his visits, about the lake and the medicine the Spokane tribe believed it held. That had been the day the bandages had come off, when Harry had leaned against him like there was nothing else solid around. Dale hadn’t fully understood what Harry had been talking about, but it had made about as much sense as anything else did. Now he realized that Harry had been wishing for the lake to heal him. Dale stared again at the lake, its unattainable curative waters rippling in the breeze.</p>
<p>Medical Lake. Spokane. He remembered Spokane. He had driven through it when he went to Twin Peaks the first time. It had been right before he had turned onto the highway that wove through the tall, majestic Douglas firs. If he remembered correctly, Spokane was at least two hours away from Twin Peaks. And, strangely, he was confident that he did remember the geography correctly. There were so many things he couldn’t remember, but he could replay every mile of that drive in his head, like the road map was etched into his mind.</p>
<p>“You keep coming back,” he said to Harry. “Every day.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, of course.” Harry said it like there was no way it could be otherwise.</p>
<p>“Don’t you have to work?” Dale imagined Harry making that two-hour drive each way, every day. Or was he staying somewhere locally? Dale hoped that Harry hadn’t wasted vacation days to come see him in the hospital.</p>
<p>“Uh, no.” Harry sounded a bit sheepish. “I’m kind of between jobs right now.”</p>
<p>Between jobs? “You’re not sheriff anymore?” Dale asked in disbelief. Harry had been completely dedicated to his job. He couldn’t imagine him quitting.</p>
<p>“No. Hawk is. I left Twin Peaks –” Harry hesitated again. “A while back,” he finally said, clearly not wanting to explain more.</p>
<p>The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place. Harry’s weary look, his reddened eyes, his abandonment of his home and his career. “How long ago?” Dale asked, resigned to the answer he knew was coming.</p>
<p>“Five years ago.” It sounded as though Harry was reliving every day of those five years as he spoke.</p>
<p>Dale didn’t know what else to say. <em>I’m sorry</em> seemed so inadequate as to be insulting. He had known that what had happened in Twin Peaks five years ago had damaged him beyond repair. He hadn’t had any idea that it had also affected Harry so much.</p>
<p>All that evening and all night and all the next morning, Dale tried to think about the events of the past five years from Harry’s perspective. It was a strange exercise. For so long, he had been so isolated, it had been impossible to believe that other people still existed. But now, the act of stepping outside himself made him realize that there was plenty of pain to go around. He remembered that night in the woods, when he had told Harry he had to go on alone. And then he had disappeared, and then had returned as a monster, as far as Harry had known. He couldn’t remember all the details from when he had seen through his double’s eyes, but he was fairly certain that Harry had had at least one close encounter with the thing that wore his face. And, of course, Harry would have thought that that thing was him. When Dale looked at it from that perspective, it became obvious that Harry must have been devasted. Harry felt a great sense of duty to protect his town. So he would blame himself for the lives that had been lost and the terror that had ensnared Twin Peaks. He would feel like he had failed in his duty.</p>
<p>Except then, Dale wondered, why had Harry left Twin Peaks? He wouldn’t just abandon the town. He would have done whatever he could to stop the murders. But, from Harry’s perspective, that would have meant facing Dale, and potentially killing him. And maybe Harry hadn’t been able to bring himself to do that. Maybe he had left – where had he gone? – so that he wouldn’t have to.</p>
<p>The next day, while they were weeding the garden, Dale asked Harry, “Where did you go?”</p>
<p>“What?” Harry clearly had no idea what he was talking about.</p>
<p>Frustrated at his inability to express himself, Dale rephrased. “When you left Twin Peaks five years ago. Where did you go?”</p>
<p>“Missoula. I worked for the police department there until – until recently.”</p>
<p>Until Dale had gotten out. So Harry had left his life in Twin Peaks, started a new one in Missoula, or tried to, and then left that too as soon as Dale needed him. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Dale asked, “Why Missoula?”</p>
<p>Harry shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “It seemed far enough.”</p>
<p>Dale stopped the gardening work. He felt sick. Harry had been forced to leave his home and his career because of what had happened to Dale. He probably felt guilty about it because he hadn’t stopped Dale from entering the Black Lodge. Not that he would have been able to. Dale remembered with a wince how confident, how arrogant, he had been in his ability to face whatever came his way. He had been such a damn fool. But Harry was so loyal to him, and so protective. He always had been, going back to when he stood up for Dale to the FBI. In fact, Dale knew that Harry had more or less idolized him. Dale still remembered, faintly, the glow he had felt inside when Harry had told him he was the best lawman he’d ever known. It had pleased him that someone like Harry admired him. Someone so level-headed and grounded in reality, who nevertheless was willing to go all in with his unusual investigative methods. Harry had trusted his instincts, even when those instincts had been so very wrong. And Harry had probably known on some level that they were wrong, but he had, as always, put his faith in Dale. And that hadn’t turned out well, for anyone. It wasn’t so much that Harry felt he had failed the town. He felt that he had failed Dale.</p>
<p>Now, Harry evidently sensed his distress. He moved closer, and spoke in a low, reassuring voice. “Hey, I live here now, in Spokane. I even got an apartment. I’m not going anywhere.”</p>
<p>While obviously meant to be comforting, that statement just made Dale feel worse. Harry was, yet again, letting what had happened to Dale dictate the course his own life as taking. “You’re so unhappy,” Dale said, trying to voice the depth of his regret. “And I think it must be because of me.”</p>
<p>“It’s not,” Harry said immediately, as if the suggestion were absurd. “I’m happier now than I have been in years.”</p>
<p>The sad thing was, Dale believed him. Harry continued to speak, saying something about how happy he was that Dale had come back. And that was even sadder, because Dale didn’t have the heart to tell him that he wasn’t back, not by a long shot, and probably never would be.</p>
<p>Dale kept quiet for the rest of the day and into the next, just wallowing in his newfound pain over how he had hurt Harry. He couldn’t even bring himself to speak to Harry the next day, while they drank coffee and ate chocolate cream pie and watched the rain. Harry gave him his space, as always, but was clearly upset that Dale was upset, which just made Dale even more upset. What a vicious circle their existence had become. Dale couldn’t see a way out of it.</p>
<p>Harry finally broke the silence by saying, “Coop, you should talk to Dr. Sherman.”</p>
<p>Dale had gathered that Dr. Sherman was the woman in the white coat, who had him brought into her office every day and smiled at him and asked him questions that he never answered. He felt that he only had a finite supply of words inside him, and he wanted to save them all for Harry. He didn’t want to waste them on anyone else. So he asked listlessly, “Why?”</p>
<p>“Well, for starters, she’s a good doctor. She might be able to help you.”</p>
<p>“She can’t.” Dale’s reply was automatic. Invaluable though Harry’s help had been to him, even that had its limits. It seemed impossible, then, for anyone else to help him. He was on his own.</p>
<p>Harry looked like he wanted to argue, but reconsidered and tried a different tack. “Well, for another thing, she won’t let you leave until she can evaluate your condition, and she needs you to talk to her to be able to do that.”</p>
<p>This was an entirely unexpected development. “Leave?” Dale repeated the word, which sounded foreign in his mouth. He had never considered that he would ever be allowed to leave the hospital.</p>
<p>“Yeah, leave the hospital,” Harry said casually. “You know, when you get better. You didn’t think you were going to be stuck here forever, did you?”</p>
<p>Of course, Dale had thought that. They didn’t let people like him out to freely walk the streets. “I thought…” he trailed off in confusion. What had he thought, exactly? That he had killed all those people, and the only reason he was in a psychiatric hospital rather than prison was because he was criminally insane. But he hadn’t actually killed anybody, he reminded himself. Yes, but did anyone else know that? Harry must know, but what about the authorities? Dale realized he had very little idea of what had happened leading up to his stay in the hospital. He should probably ask Harry, but he was fairly certain he didn’t want to know, and he was quite certain Harry wouldn’t want to talk about it anyway. So he forced his mind away from that train of thought and instead took in the new information Harry had just given him, that at some point he would be expected to return to normal society and function within it. “Where would I go?” he mused aloud.</p>
<p>“You can stay with me,” Harry said, then quickly added, “If you want to, I mean.” Then he looked a bit embarrassed, as if he had overstepped his boundaries. As if there even were boundaries between them now.</p>
<p>Dale spent the rest of the day mulling over the prospect of leaving the hospital. He didn’t know how he felt about it. The thought of having to make choices again was overwhelming. That had been something off-limits to him for as long as he could remember. But at the same time, he did want to see something of the world again. Just to make sure it was still there, and that it was as he remembered it.</p>
<p>That evening, in the common room, Dan sat across from an old man who was setting up his chessboard. He had seen the man before, usually playing chess against himself, and always seeming puzzled when he lost. At one time, Dale would found it strange that the man couldn’t predict hos own next move, but now he thought he understood.</p>
<p>Wordlessly, Dale moved one of the white pawns. The King’s Gambit, opening with a sacrifice. The old man grinned toothlessly and accepted the gambit, moving his black pawn in response. He seemed excited to have an opponent who wasn’t himself for once.</p>
<p>“I’ve seen you around, Danny boy,” the old man said. “You’re one of the really crazy ones, ain’t ya?”</p>
<p>Dale shrugged. That seemed like an accurate enough description. He advanced another pawn. This was his first time interacting with one of the other patients. He didn’t know why he was suddenly being social, inasmuch as it was possible for him to be. He just sat back and watched his own actions with bemusement, not able to predict his own next move.</p>
<p>“That face of yours,” the man continued. “You do that to yourself?”</p>
<p>Dale nodded.</p>
<p>“Thought so,” the old man said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “You were trying to get them out, weren’t you?”</p>
<p>Dale looked at him blankly.</p>
<p>“The transmitters,” the man whispered. “The ones the government puts in. I got mine out myself, but I think they gave me another one.” Holding his arm down under the table, as if to hide it, the old man gave a quick glance around the common room and then rolled his sleeve back to show Dale a series of long-healed gashes on his arm. “FBI is everywhere,” the man said, rolling his sleeve back up and going back to the game.</p>
<p>Dale wondered how the man would react if he knew that he was playing chess with a former FBI agent. He probably wouldn’t believe it. Dale could hardly believe it himself. The FBI, which had once been his entire life, was now so distant and abstract, it was like something from a story someone had told him.</p>
<p>“I tell you what,” the man said, studying the board. “Was a time a stay in a place like this weren’t no spa weekend like it is now. This very hospital, they would put you in a straitjacket and let you bounce off the walls of a padded room for years. They’d shock you with electricity and cut your brain in half. Then when you died, they’d burn you down to ashes and stick you in an urn in the basement, unknown and unmissed. Boy, if these crazed old walls could talk, they’d be screaming bloody murder.”</p>
<p>Dale decided to wrap up the game as quickly as possible. Maybe there was a reason he had avoided the other patients until now. He was now only three moves from victory. It turned out that the old man wasn’t much better at playing against other people than he was against himself.</p>
<p>“You’re one of them non-verbals, huh?” the old man continued, apparently just now noticing that Dale hadn’t said anything. “Ya know, I been in and outta the cuckoo’s nest my whole life. I seen every kind of lunatic there is. Now, the civil commits, most of them are crazy cause they see things that ain’t real. But the GEIs –” at Dale’s questioning look, the man clarified – “that’s guilty except for insanity, they’re mostly crazy cause what they seen is too real, and they can’t unsee it.”</p>
<p>Dale checkmated the old man.</p>
<p>“Ha!” The man seemed delighted at having just lost. Maybe it was simply the novelty of having an opponent other than himself to lose to for once. “Gotta tell you,” he said, leaning over toward Dale again, “I know this is a civil ward, but you got the look of a GEI. Guilty except for something, that’s what you are.”</p>
<p>That night, as he lay in bed, Dale wondered what it was the old man had seen in him. He did feel like a criminal, like he was doing time. And it was true. His problem was that he couldn’t unsee the too-real things he had seen.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next morning, Dale was escorted by a hospital staffer into Dr. Sherman’s office for their regular session. “Good morning, Dan,” the doctor said as he took his seat. Dale wondered idly why everyone in the hospital seemed to think his name was Dan. It wasn’t just Dr. Sherman, he had heard other doctors, nurses, and orderlies all call him that too. “How are you this morning?” She always asked him that, smiling patiently while she waited for an answer that never came.</p>
<p>Except this time, Dale sighed, and answered. “All right, I suppose.” After all, Harry wanted him to talk to the doctor, and respecting Harry’s wishes was the least he could do now.</p>
<p>“Good,” Dr. Sherman said, without missing a beat. “Can you tell me a bit more about what you’re feeling in general these days?”</p>
<p>Dale thought about that for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Empty, mostly.”</p>
<p>Dr. Sherman scribbled something down in her notes. “You’ve experienced a great deal of trauma,” she said gently. “Are you aware of what’s happened to you?”</p>
<p>“Yes, I’m aware. Do I have to talk about that?”</p>
<p>“No. You can talk about whatever you’d like.” She put down her notepad and regarded him serenely. Apparently sensing that he needed some sort of prompt, she continued, “Why don’t you start by telling me a little about yourself?”</p>
<p>Dale tried to think of something. He kept coming up blank. Most things he would once have thought to say about himself no longer applied.</p>
<p>“For instance,” the doctor continued helpfully, “where are you from?”</p>
<p>“Philadelphia.” The name sounded like that of an alien planet.</p>
<p>Dr. Sherman waited for a moment, then seemed to realize that was all he had to say on that subject. “And what are some things you enjoy doing?”</p>
<p>That was another stumper. He had once enjoyed so many things, but they all seemed so hollow now. “I used to enjoy my work. Before, I mean.” Dr. Sherman nodded encouragingly, and he continued. “I enjoyed the challenge of it. And it involved a lot of travel. That was something else I enjoyed. Discovering new places, meeting new people.”</p>
<p>“I can see how that would be rewarding,” Dr. Sherman said, to fill in the pause that followed. “What else?”</p>
<p>He shrugged. “I was mostly occupied by work. In my free time, I studied Tibetan Buddhism.”</p>
<p>“That sounds fascinating. I’d love to hear more about that.”</p>
<p>Dale shrugged again. “I don’t think it’s something I believe in anymore.” He had tried meditating. Once, while he was trapped, and then once more in the hospital, shortly after he had regained the ability to speak. Both times, he had completely failed to achieve the state he had once been able to access so easily. Before, meditation had help him to lose himself, to feel fully engaged with the here and now. Now, he was already so lost that the drifting away offered by meditation seemed more terrible than peaceful.</p>
<p>“That’s too bad,” Dr. Sherman said neutrally. “Often, spirituality can help people get through difficult times.” She waited a moment for a response. When he offered none, she asked, “And what about family? I know you and Harry are close, but do you have anyone else in your family who can provide support?”</p>
<p>“No. No one else.” Dale didn’t realize until after he’s spoken that he’d essentially just said that Harry was his family. It wasn’t strictly accurate, but on some deeper level it was true.</p>
<p>“So tell me about Harry.”</p>
<p>Dale looked at her, surprised by the request. “Well,” he began slowly, “he’s the best man I know. Loyal to a fault, and with the highest integrity. He takes his duties very seriously. He’s quite intelligent, more than he realizes. And also so wise. An old soul, as they say.” He was frustrated with how generic his description sounded, but what could he possibly say about Harry? It was like trying to describe water, or sunlight, or air, all those things that give sustenance so freely. “What I find most remarkable about him is that he presents himself as a simple man, what you see is what you get. And I think that’s how most people perceive him. But underneath that is the most exceptional mind and heart you’ll ever find. I’m in continual awe at the depths he contains.”</p>
<p>“Yes, I see what you mean,” Dr. Sherman said thoughtfully. “He seems to have some layers.” She added, “It’s clear that he loves you very much.”</p>
<p>“I wish he didn’t,” Dale said, swallowing a sudden lump in his throat as he thought of the pain in Harry’s eyes whenever he looked at him.</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“I don’t deserve it,” Dale said after a moment.</p>
<p>Dr. Sherman regarded him compassionately. “You deserve to be loved, Dan.”</p>
<p>Maybe Dan did, whoever he was. Dale, on the other hand, had taken the gift of Harry’s friendship and given nothing in return. All Harry had ever gotten from him was grief. Dale let his mind dwell on how much better Harry’s life would be – not to mention how much better off Twin Peaks itself would be – if Dale had never set foot in the town. His mind kept returning to that thought, like a scab he couldn’t stop himself from picking at.</p>
<p>That afternoon, while he and Harry walked the garden paths, he told Harry, “I talked to Dr. Sherman.”</p>
<p>“Yeah?” Harry said, casting his eyes sideways at him. “That’s good.”</p>
<p>Harry clearly wanted to know how his talk with Dr. Sherman had gone, but also clearly wanted to give him privacy. So Dale just asked, “Why does everyone here call me Dan?”</p>
<p>Unexpectedly, Harry laughed. “Oh, yeah. I told them your name is Dan Carter. I came up with the name on the spot, that’s why it’s not very good. I also told them you’re my cousin, by the way. That’s the fake identity I had to make up for you. Sorry about that.”</p>
<p>“I don’t mind,” Dale said absently. “I’d rather be someone else anyway.” His mind was occupied. A fake identity. He once again had to wonder at what had been going on in the outside world during the past five years. He already knew, of course, that the thing that wore his face had treated Twin Peaks like its own personal hunting grounds, and that everyone must have assumed that it was him. The obvious next questions had not occurred to him. He had resurfaced into the normal everyday world so gradually that simple matters of cause and effect hadn’t seemed relevant. But now he wondered. What had happened to the monster? How, and why, had he himself been finally released? And why was he, who as far as anyone knew was the monstrous serial killer who had terrorized Twin Peaks, being compassionately treated in a hospital rather than locked up in a prison?</p>
<p>He didn’t know about the first two questions. But he had a hunch about the third. It was Harry, protecting him once again. Probably the others too, Albert and Hawk and Andy. He had a dreamlike memory of hearing their voices that night in the woods when he had been released. They had concealed his true identity so that he wouldn’t be mistaken for the monster. The act of kindness overwhelmed him. Maybe it would have been better if his friends hadn’t protected him. If he were in prison now, that would at least be more like what he was accustomed to.</p>
<p>“Coop –” Harry sounded distressed.</p>
<p>Dale mentally replayed his own last words and realized that he had upset Harry without meaning to. Deflecting, he broke in to ask, “Why did you have to make up a fake identity for me?” Not that he didn’t already know, but he wanted confirmation.</p>
<p>“Because –” Harry stopped, a look of pure agony on his face. Whatever was at the end of that sentence was clearly too painful for him to verbalize.</p>
<p>So Dale finished it for him, feeling guilty about what he was subjecting Harry to. “Because there was another me, and he did terrible things.”</p>
<p>Harry stopped in his tracks, looking horrified. “How did you know about that?”</p>
<p>“I saw it. Some of it, anyway. I could see through his eyes. He always found a mirror to look in right before he killed. I think he did that so I could see that he had my face.” Dale felt strangely detached as he described it, as if it had happened to someone else. And in a way, it had. The person who had cried and screamed and begged for those people’s lives was like a stranger to him now. He had learned long ago that showing his despair only made the killing take longer, as if it was being savored like a fine glass of red wine.</p>
<p>Dale was brought back to the present moment by Harry’s hands on his wrists. He hadn’t realized that he had been probing the wounds on his face, maybe subconsciously examining whether there was any more damage he could inflict. But Harry gently pulled his hands down. He looked like he was going to be sick.</p>
<p>“That thing is dead now,” Harry said fiercely. He sounded as if he almost wished it weren’t, so that he could kill it again.</p>
<p>That answered Dale’s question about what had happened to the monster, sort of. Maybe it even explained why he had been released. Whatever power the thing had had to trap him must have dissipated with its death. He supposed he should feel relieved about the news of his tormentor’s demise, since it meant there was no chance of it coming after him again. But he couldn’t summon up any feelings about it one way or the other. It had never been fully alive, anyway, and now it would never be fully dead. It would always be there, crouching in the corner of his mind, leering at him when he closed his eyes. He would never be free of it.</p>
<p>“But everyone thought it was me,” Dale said, returning to the conversation. “Even you thought so.”</p>
<p>He didn’t mean it as an accusation, just a simple statement of fact. After all, there was no way Harry could possibly have known otherwise. But apparently Dale’s words had touched an open wound. “I’m sorry,” Harry said in a hoarse voice, like he was choking on his guilt.</p>
<p>“It’s okay,” Dale said in what he hoped was a reassuring voice. Had he made Harry think he blamed him for what had happened? That was the last thing he had intended. “Sometimes I even thought it was me,” he went on. “It was hard to tell whether the real me was the one in the Black Lodge or the one outside.” He couldn’t explain that feeling he had had, of being so disconnected from anyone or anything familiar that he didn’t even know who he was anymore. It sounded insane, and after all, it was. “I thought maybe that’s why I’m here. Some of the patients are guilty except for insanity.” He thought of the chess-playing old man’s words. Guilty except for something.</p>
<p>“You’re not guilty of anything. And you’re not insane. That thing hurt you, but you’re here to get better.”</p>
<p>Dale believed that Harry believed all those things, but he found them all to be rather questionable. Still, he didn’t argue. He had the feeling that Harry was as emotionally exhausted by the subject as he was, maybe even more so.</p>
<p>Dale started having sessions with Dr. Sherman every morning. She started him on an antidepressant, which he obediently took even though he had his doubts about what chemical interventions could really do in his case. Every session, she started by asking him how he was feeling, which he never knew how to answer. The first few days, their therapy sessions were mostly small talk and long silences. Dale supposed that the doctor was trying to establish some rapport. While he appreciated that she wasn’t trying to force him to talk about things he wasn’t ready for, he also realized that he was only prolonging the inevitable. He would never be ready to talk about what had happened, and it wasn’t as though he could tell Dr. Sherman what had really happened anyway, but he had to tell her something eventually. And, he realized gradually, there were things he wanted to say about what had happened. Some confessions he had to make. And these were things he couldn’t bring himself to tell Harry. So, one morning, when Dr. Sherman asked him how he was feeling, he decided to bite the bullet.</p>
<p>“I’m experiencing some anxiety,” he told her. “I’ve been thinking about what it was like inside.”</p>
<p>“Inside?” she repeated. “You mean during your captivity?”</p>
<p>So that’s what they were calling it. “Yes, that’s right.”</p>
<p>“Would you like to tell me about it?”</p>
<p>He nodded. “It was – a room.” He paused, not sure how to convey the horror of that room without bringing anything otherworldly into the description.</p>
<p>“Were you in this room the whole time?” Dr. Sherman asked.</p>
<p>“Yes. The whole time.”</p>
<p>“Were you alone?”</p>
<p>“No. Well, yes. There were others, sometimes. I talked to them. But they weren’t real.” That was essentially true. The giant and the dwarf and the various other entities he had encountered weren’t real, in the way that the chair he was sitting in or the sunlight filtering through the window was real.</p>
<p>Dr. Sherman nodded. “Just so you know, hallucinations are a perfectly normal response to extended sensory deprivation and isolation. There’s nothing pathological about it.”</p>
<p>Dale shrugged. That was the least of his concerns.</p>
<p>“What about your captor?” Dr. Sherman asked gently. “Where was he during all this?”</p>
<p>Taking a deep breath, Dale said, “Outside. But –” he trailed off. Dr. Sherman waited patiently for him to continue. “Sometimes he showed me things.”</p>
<p>“What did he show you?”</p>
<p>“What he was doing. Outside. The killings.”</p>
<p>Dr. Sherman frowned. “You mean he took you to the scenes?”</p>
<p>“No.” Dale hadn’t quite thought through how to explain that part of it. “I never left the room. It was –” inspiration suddenly struck – “on video. He would record it and show it to me.”</p>
<p>Dr. Sherman’s expression stayed neutral. “And what was that like for you to see?”</p>
<p>“The first few times, it was terrible. But after some time had passed, I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t feel anything.” His voice shook slightly as he spoke. This was something he would never be able to say to Harry. He couldn’t bear the thought of causing Harry’s idealized view of him to become diminished. Harry wouldn’t blame him for losing his soul, because after all it had been taken from him against his will. But Harry would mourn the loss, and that would be even worse. Somehow, though, Dale did need someone to know what a shell of a former human being he was, and Dr. Sherman, with her professionally sympathetic expression, was the perfect person for that role. Someone whose job was to care, but not too much.</p>
<p>Forcing himself to get the words out, he continued, “They weren’t even real people to me anymore. I wasn’t a person anymore myself. And after a while, I didn’t even want to get out anymore. What I wanted was to just stop existing.” And that was the other thing he couldn’t tell Harry. How, that night in the woods, he had held that obsidian to his throat and felt a surge of relief that there would be an end after all.</p>
<p>“Do you still feel that way now?”</p>
<p>“No, not like that.” Ever since he had heard Harry’s voice say his name, non-existence had lost some of its allure.</p>
<p>“What is it that you want now?”</p>
<p>“I want—” He thought about it for a long moment. “I want to become who I was before.”</p>
<p>“And why do you want that?”</p>
<p>“It would make Harry happy.”</p>
<p>Dr. Sherman nodded, as if that was what she had been expecting him to say. “In the long term, you have to think about your own happiness. It’s not enough to live for someone else. You have to live for yourself.”</p>
<p>Dale didn’t know what to say to that. Living for someone else had to be enough, because that was all he had right now.</p>
<p>“We’ll work on that over time,” Dr. Sherman went on. “But you should also know that you may not be the same as you were before, and that’s okay. Our experiences change us. An experience like the one you had would have a major impact on anyone. But you don’t have to be unchanged in order to find yourself again. You just have to find your core, that part of you that is so deep inside that nothing can touch it. And when you find it, you will feel like yourself again, and you will be able to experience joy and connect with the world again. And I think <em>that</em> would make Harry happy.”</p>
<p>“All right,” Dale said, when he realized she was waiting for him to reply.</p>
<p>“There is something else I have to ask you about,” Dr. Sherman said. She picked up a hand mirror that had been lying on a side table. “I assume you haven’t yet seen the wounds on your face?”</p>
<p>Dale shook his head. There were no mirrors in the hospital. They were too dangerous.</p>
<p>“Do you feel ready to take a look?”</p>
<p>Dale shrugged. “Yes.” Based on the way Harry had reacted when the bandages had come off, he imagined he was a pretty grim sight, but he couldn’t summon up any feelings about that.</p>
<p>“Are you sure? The scarring is quite extensive. You may find it disturbing.”</p>
<p>Dale almost laughed. His threshold for what qualified as disturbing had been drastically recalibrated. But he just nodded gravely and said, “I’m ready.”</p>
<p>Dr. Sherman handed him the mirror, and he peered into it. He looked like someone who had been in a fire or some other kind of horrible accident. He was faintly impressed with how much progress he had made toward removing all the skin from his face, which had been his admittedly ill-conceived goal at the time. Other than that, he felt nothing. He gave the mirror back to Dr. Sherman.</p>
<p>“Well?” Dr. Sherman prodded.</p>
<p>“You’re right,” Dale said. “The scarring is quite extensive.”</p>
<p>“And? Does that bother you?”</p>
<p>“Not really.”</p>
<p>“Why not?”</p>
<p>“It seems only fitting that the way I look on the outside reflects the way I feel on the inside.”</p>
<p>“And what way is that?” It seemed that she asked him how he felt every five minutes.</p>
<p>Dale paused. “Damaged,” he finally said.</p>
<p>“Is that why you inflicted those injuries on yourself in the first place? Because you felt damaged on the inside?”</p>
<p>“Possibly. I’m not certain why I did it. I wasn’t thinking clearly.” That was a bit of an evasion, but he couldn’t tell her that he had tried to remove his face because he felt as though it didn’t belong to him anymore.</p>
<p>“And have you felt compelled to hurt yourself since then?”</p>
<p>“No.” There would be no point in that.</p>
<p>Dr. Sherman nodded. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said, and wrote down some notes.</p>
<p>The days passed, with his morning sessions with Dr. Sherman and afternoon visits with Harry providing a steady rhythm. Dale was amazed at Harry’s ability to find a different kind of pie to bring him every time, as if Dale’s mental health depended on the variety the pie flavors brought to break up the institutional monotony of life in the hospital. They spent long sunny hours in the garden, where Dale found some satisfaction in having productive work to do, of watching things live and grow. Harry had also started bringing binoculars and birding guidebooks so that he could teach Dale to identify the birds they could see in and around the lake. Dale enjoyed watching the birds. He was fascinated by their fraught social interactions and mesmerized by the symphony of their flight. But even more than that, as he learned more about birding, he appreciated the way it made him focus on small details so he could differentiate one species from another. It was almost like meditation. And the best part of it was Harry, guiding his view with the binoculars, his soft voice naming the birds, bringing order to the world.</p>
<p>One morning, during their therapy session, Dr. Sherman flipped through her notes and said, “You seem to be responding well to the sertraline.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Dale said. He didn’t feel better, exactly, but he did feel at least feel different. Instead of the numbness and listlessness he had grown accustomed to, he now felt waves of anxiety and grief and self-loathing rolling in and out like the tides. But during the times those waves receded, he felt – not like himself – but at least like someone. He didn’t know how much to credit the antidepressant for that. The days outside with Harry and the birds and the sun-warmed soil seemed like the more effective medicine.</p>
<p>“How would you feel –” there she went, asking him about his feelings again – “about continuing your treatment on an outpatient basis?”</p>
<p>“You mean leave the hospital?” That was not something he had expected, certainly not so soon.</p>
<p>“Only if you feel prepared for it. We’re not kicking you out or anything.” She smiled. “But my evaluation of your condition is that the acute crisis, the brief psychotic episode, has subsided. The next stage is to treat your PTSD and depression. For those chronic conditions, a gradual transition to normal life can be helpful. And that transition will be more feasible if you go home.”</p>
<p>“I don’t have a home,” Dale said automatically.</p>
<p>“I think Harry would beg to differ. He quite enthusiastically offered his apartment as a place for you to stay once you’re discharged. But the decision is yours, of course.”</p>
<p>Dale hesitated. “Couldn’t I just get my own place?” he asked, knowing even as he spoke that he had no money and no job and no credit history and no chance of finding a landlord willing to rent to someone who just got out of a mental hospital.</p>
<p>Dr. Sherman shook her head. “I would strongly advise against that for now. While I don’t believe you need 24-hour care anymore, you’re still not well enough yet to live on your own. For someone in your condition, I will only sign the discharge papers if you have a safe transitional housing situation. Can I ask why you don’t want to stay with Harry? Do you feel unsafe with him?”</p>
<p>“No, of course not.” Dale was taken aback that she even had that thought. “I just don’t want to be a burden to him, even more than I already have been.”</p>
<p>“Dan,” Dr. Sherman said gently. “Needing help and being a burden are not the same thing. I’m quite confident that Harry doesn’t see you as a burden. The kind of love and support he’s offering is hugely beneficial for your recovery. But it’s up to you whether or not you want to accept it.”</p>
<p>When she put it that way, Dale saw that staying with Harry was his only option. He couldn’t refuse Harry’s generosity without implicitly rejecting his friendship. And Harry’s friendship was literally the only positive thing in his life now. So he nodded. “I’ll stay with Harry.”</p>
<p>As soon as he agreed to the plan, he felt a surge of relief, followed by an equally strong surge of guilt. He was relieved that he would now be spending more time with Harry. It was only when he was with Harry that he felt like a human being. When Harry looked at him, he could see that Harry saw past all the surface damage down to that core Dr. Sherman had talked about, that part of himself that was buried so deeply that Dale himself couldn’t find it. The fact that Harry saw it and believed in it gave Dale some hope, however dim, that it still existed and could maybe even reemerge someday. But then Dale felt guilty about needing Harry like that, as a sort of emotional crutch to affirm his humanity and his identity. No matter what Dr. Sherman said, that was too heavy a burden to ask of anyone, especially when Harry had already given so much of himself. How much more could he possibly have left to give?</p>
<p>That afternoon, he and Harry met with Dr. Sherman together. Dale was thrown off when Dr. Sherman brought up the idea of reconstructive surgery. He refused immediately and instinctively. Irrational though it undoubtedly was, he didn’t regret the damage he had inflicted on his face and didn’t want it repaired. He never wanted to see that face again. It was just another of the things that had been stolen from him and destroying it had been a satisfying act of defiance. But when Dr. Sherman asked the very reasonable question of why he was refusing the surgery, he couldn’t think of a reasonable answer. He finally said something about not wanting to be himself anymore. That was true, but immediately regretted saying it when he saw how much Harry was unsettled by it.</p>
<p>Over the next few days, Dr. Sherman spent their morning therapy sessions talking with Dale about coping strategies he could use to deal with anxiety and depression once he was discharged. He patiently listened, making a good-faith effort to learn her visualization and breathing exercises, which he once would have been able to seamlessly incorporate into his regular meditation practice. He also nodded his understanding that he should call 911 or the crisis line if he felt compelled to harm himself. Somehow, he doubted that he would have the opportunity to hurt himself even if he wanted to, because Harry would undoubtedly be watching him closely. And he had no desire for self-harm anyway. It seemed to require too much effort, and it would only hurt Harry.</p>
<p>On discharge day, Harry was radiating nervous energy. They thanked Dr. Sherman for her help, and then were allowed to walk unceremoniously out of the hospital doors and into the parking lot. On the drive to Spokane, Dale couldn’t help gawking at the sights they passed. He had forgotten how busy and crowded and noisy the ordinary human world was. He had never noticed it before. Now, he wondered if it would ever seem normal to him again. Harry kept looking at him with open concern, so he tried to project an outward air of calm. As they left the highway and entered the city, Harry started pointing out landmarks. As always, the sound of Harry’s quiet voice explaining things had a soothing effect, and soon Dale actually felt calm instead of just projecting it.</p>
<p>They arrived at the apartment, and Harry was almost comically apologetic about how small and humble it was as he showed Dale around. Harry had obviously put a lot of effort into making the place welcoming, with new furniture and linens and clothes for Dale, and even a high-end coffeemaker that Dale knew Harry had bought just for him. He felt a lump in his throat as Harry asked him if it was all okay.</p>
<p>“It’s wonderful. Thank you, Harry.” As he spoke, Dale realized that it was the first time he had thanked Harry, for anything, since his return. That seemed like such a preposterous oversight on his part that he was amazed at himself. But at the same time, the words were woefully inadequate. Harry seemed to hear the sincerity that underlay them, though, and he smiled as he got out pie and coffee for them.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The days passed in an early-summer haze. Harry gradually eased him into excursions around the city, to the park and art museum and library. It was strange to see people going about their everyday lives, blissfully unaware of the darkness that lay hidden beneath the surface of the world. He remembered being innocent of that himself. Sometimes people stared at his disfigured face or whispered to one another when he walked by. That always set Harry on edge, so Dale tried to avoid letting people see his face whenever possible. There was no point in unnerving ordinary citizens with his hideous facial scars, anyway. It was better to let them go one thinking that the world was a bright and beautiful place, without a specter like him casting darkness on them.</p>
<p>Occasionally, Dale would forget that five years had passed, and would get a jolt of surprise when he saw a calendar indicating that the year was now 1994, not 1989, or when he heard references on the news to recently formed countries or to a president he’d never heard of. Harry patiently updated him on everything that had transpired in his absence. The fact that the Cold War was now over was so shocking, it didn’t even seem like the good news it was. How could the world shift so dramatically in such a short period of time, so that a conflict that had been simmering his entire life had fizzled out so unspectacularly? Had reality always been this unstable? At times, he wondered half-seriously whether he had emerged into some science-fiction parallel universe.</p>
<p>Sometimes he wondered about people he’d known. Colleagues, friends. What had happened to them, and what did they think had happened to him? Those thoughts never led anywhere pleasant, so he tried to head them off as quickly as possible.</p>
<p>As he had anticipated, Harry’s constant presence was immensely comforting. He hadn’t realized, when he was in the hospital, how on edge he had been. He had been constantly waiting for something horrible to happen, because that was the only kind of thing that ever did happen. Every time he woke up, he had had long moments of panic as he tried to remember where he was. But now, Harry was there. He had an uncanny ability to figure out what Dale needed before Dale even realized he needed anything. That included things like food and sleep, not to mention coffee. But it also included walks in the park when Dale felt like the walls were closing in on him, and drives out to the wildlife refuge when the city noises became too loud, and Harry’s voice talking about nothing in particular whenever other voices tried to take over inside Dale’s head. Now, when Dale awoke in the middle of the night, he no longer had those moments when he kept his eyes closed out of fear of where he would find himself when he opened them. He knew where he was now. He was with Harry.</p>
<p>But he also continued to feel ashamed about needing Harry so badly. Harry was giving him everything he had, all his time and space and attention and affection, and getting absolutely nothing in return. It seemed impossible that Harry wouldn’t, on some level, resent him for how he had taken over his life. But Harry never said a single sharp word to him, and every time he looked at Dale, it was like he was beholding a miracle.</p>
<p>When Harry first said he was thinking of going back to work, Dale’s first reaction was to freeze, heart pounding, as he confronted the sudden prospect of long hours without Harry’s grounding presence. But then he immediately hated himself for that reaction. Quite aside from the inescapable fact that Harry needed to work so that he could support them both, Harry just plain needed to work. As a man of action, hanging around town all day with Dale was a waste of his talents. Harry needed to be around other people, normal people, and he needed to be making a difference, helping make the world a better place. That was what he did best. It was who he was.</p>
<p>So when Harry asked Dale what he thought about him going back to work, Dale said simply, “I think you should.” That was true. He knew that Harry should go back to work, get on with his life. Dale was shocked when Harry said he wouldn’t be looking for police work, but rather a job in security. When Harry brushed off his concerns about being bored with that kind of work, Dale started feeling despondent.</p>
<p>“Harry. What is your plan?”</p>
<p>“What do you mean?” Harry seemed honestly confused by the question.  “My plan is to get a job, maybe doing security, and eventually we can save enough money to move to a bigger place –”</p>
<p>That simple “we” was just too much, and Dale had to cut Harry off. “I mean, what is your plan for your life? What do you want to do?”</p>
<p>“Just what I’m doing.” Harry seemed perplexed by the suggestion that he should want to do anything other than spend his every waking moment with Dale.</p>
<p>Dale took a deep breath. Harry seemed to think that he was shackled to him, and it was vitally important that Dale disabuse him of that notion. It hurt to think of how he was holding Harry back from living a full life.</p>
<p>“What you’re doing is not a life, Harry,” he said, desperately trying to make Harry understand. “Don’t you want to have a career again? You were such a good sheriff. And don’t you want to have a community again? You’re so alone here.” He thought of Twin Peaks and how he had forever ruined it for Harry, made him an exile from the only home he had ever known.</p>
<p>“I’m not alone, you’re here,” Harry said stubbornly. “And we’ll have all that stuff again. Once you get better.”</p>
<p>“You can’t plan your life around me getting better.” Dale felt trapped. He could accept that he himself would never again have a full life, but he couldn’t accept that his mental illness was holding Harry hostage as well.</p>
<p>“You’re already better than you were.” Harry sounded so confident, so full of hope, that Dale gave up on trying to convince him otherwise.</p>
<p>As they walked their return route back through the park, Dale mulled over the situation. Harry believed, despite all reason and evidence to the contrary, that Dale was getting better and that this trajectory of improvement would continue until he was back to his old self. And Harry was putting his own life on hold until that miracle occurred. So there was really only one thing Dale could do. He had to get better, for Harry’s sake if not for his own. All this time, he had been dutifully taking his antidepressants and thinking of things to say to his therapist. But his heart had not been in it, because the prospect of anything like recovery seemed so impossible. But now, thinking about how his condition was affecting Harry, recovery seemed like an imperative. He would get there, one way or another.</p>
<p>His newfound determination was tested almost immediately, when Harry got a job as a nighttime security guard. Every night since Dale had been released from the hospital, he had fallen asleep with Harry nearby. He had noticed that Harry never went to bed before him, instead reading a magazine or watching TV with the volume turned way down until Dale fell asleep. It was another of those things that Harry somehow knew Dale needed, to feel safe and protected when he was in that vulnerable state between wakefulness and sleep. Whenever Dale awoke, the sound of Harry’s soft breathing from across the room would keep him centered. But now, Harry was away at work all night. The first few nights, Dale tried to go through his normal bedtime routine and lay down and closed his eyes. But the instant he did, he saw, branded against his eyelids, the woods and the room and the bloody mirrors, and the adrenaline rush forced him up and out of bed and across the room before he even had a chance to open his eyes. After that, the thought of sleep was so unappealing that he spent the long, lonely nights sitting at the table, drinking coffee, staring through the window at the darkened city, waiting for the sunrise and Harry.</p>
<p>Of course, it didn’t take Harry long to notice how exhausted he was and that he was only going to bed when Harry did at the end of his shift. When Dale confessed that he wasn’t able to sleep without Harry there, Harry didn’t said anything, just quit his new job immediately. Dale had said once that Harry had the patience of a saint, and it turned out that had been understating it.</p>
<p>Harry seemed relieved when he found a day shift working security at the mall. Perhaps in reaction to lingering guilt over leaving Dale on his own at night, Harry suggested that Dale come with him to work.</p>
<p>“Is that even allowed?” Dale asked dubiously.</p>
<p>Harry shrugged. “The mall’s a public place. It’s open hours. Why not?”</p>
<p>So Dale started accompanying Harry to work every day, hanging out at the food court, walking around on patrol, browsing the stores. It was a relief to be with Harry all day, so that he wouldn’t have to think of things to occupy his mind in order to chase away the darkness that encroached whenever Harry was absent. And, even better, Harry obviously enjoyed having him around. As the weeks went by, Harry seemed happier than he had in all the time since Dale had last seen him in Twin Peaks. No doubt that was because Harry now had something to do, and he now had the opportunity to interact with people. So Dale made an effort to participate in Harry’s new life. He drank coffee in the food court, chatted with the people who worked at the various shops, and even occasionally helped out with some of Harry’s minor security tasks. As they became settled in their new routine, Dale felt a change on his own mood. He still felt empty inside, but he only noticed it when he reflected on how he was feeling, and now he was keeping busy enough during the day that he didn’t have as much time for brooding. The waves of despair were still lapping at his heels, but now he could at least keep his head above water. And Harry picked up on the change and started to smile and laugh and tease Dale more often. So Dale responded as cheerfully as he could, and that in turn made Harry even happier. It was a virtuous circle. Maybe that was the road to recovery, Dale thought. Fake it till you make it.</p>
<p>One morning, as they prepared to head to the mall for work, the phone rang. Harry answered, and Dale could tell just by the way his face turned sour who it must be on the other line. Harry was generally good-natured, and there was only one person Dale knew of who could put that kind of look on his face,</p>
<p>“Is that Albert?” Dale asked, a bit surprised at getting a call from him out of the blue.</p>
<p>Harry nodded and continued sniping with Albert. He was clearly even more annoyed with Albert than usual, because he felt that Albert had abandoned Dale, and was reluctant to turn the phone over. So Dale stood up.</p>
<p>“Harry, I’ll talk to him,” Dale said, holding his hand out for the phone. He wasn’t sure what he would say to Albert, or what Albert would say to him, but he had had enough of hearing Harry get worked up by having to talk with his nemesis.</p>
<p>Harry refused to give him the phone right away, instead giving Albert a talking-to about not upsetting Dale. Dale rolled his eyes. Harry was far too protective of him. After all he had been thorough, he wasn’t worried about handling Albert. Besides, Albert had always been fond of him, and Dale was of the few people that Albert had always been kind to, in his own way. Finally, Harry handed Dale the phone and said, “He’s all yours.”</p>
<p>“Hello, Albert,” Dale said.</p>
<p>“Hey, Coop.” Albert paused, as if trying to think of something to say, then settled on, “It’s good to hear your voice.”</p>
<p>“You too.” It was, although it was also strange to hear Albert’s familiar voice in his ear, when his old life in the FBI seemed so distant.</p>
<p>There was another long moment of silence, then Albert asked gruffly, “Are you doing okay?”</p>
<p>“Much better now.” Dale didn’t want to elaborate on that too much, especially with Harry in the room. As if sensing his thoughts, Harry signaled that he was going to the coffee shop across the street. Dale nodded, and Harry left.</p>
<p>“Listen,” Albert said, sounding more tentative than Dale had ever heard him before. “I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier.”</p>
<p>“It’s all right.”</p>
<p>“Not really. I should have called. I was there that night in Twin Peaks, you know. In the woods.”</p>
<p>“I know. I remember. You made them take my handcuffs off.”</p>
<p>There was a sharp intake of air. “You remember that? I mean, you were pretty out of it. I didn’t think you recognized any of us.”</p>
<p>“I did, sort of. It was myself I didn’t recognize.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I bet.” Albert paused. “Anyway, I should have called sooner. I just –” he trailed off.</p>
<p>“You don’t have to apologize. I understand. I haven’t been myself.”</p>
<p>“That didn’t stop Harry.” There was no resentment in Albert’s voice. Instead, there was something that might have been gratitude.</p>
<p>“No. But Harry is –” Dale paused, trying to think of how to put it.</p>
<p>“A better man than me,” Albert said. When Dale didn’t say anything, Albert added, “Don’t rush to disagree. Anyway, I’m glad he never gave up on you. How is he, anyway?”</p>
<p>“He just started a new job.”</p>
<p>“Doing what? Long-haul trucker? Lumberjack? John Deere tractor salesman?  I’m running out of stereotypical redneck jobs.”</p>
<p>“He’s working as a security guard at the downtown mall.”</p>
<p>“He’s a mall cop?” Albert spoke with such malicious glee that Dale immediately regretted saying anything. Now Harry would never hear the end of it from Albert, and Dale in turn would never hear the end of it from Harry.</p>
<p>“Albert,” Dale said in his most imploring voice. “Please be kind to Harry. I owe him everything”</p>
<p>Albert sighed heavily. “Yeah, I know. I was kind of an asshole to him while you were in the hospital.”</p>
<p>“You? Really?” Dale deadpanned.</p>
<p>“I sort of implied it was his fault you ended up in that hellhole in the first place.”</p>
<p>“Why would you do that?” Dale felt a surge of anger at Albert. Harry had probably already been feeling guilty about not stopping Dale from entering the Black Lodge, and Albert was a genius at finding people’s insecurities and hitting them where it hurt.</p>
<p>“Because I’m an asshole. I was feeling bad that I wasn’t there for you, and I took it out on him. Transference, I believe it’s called. It’s a neat little trick, and he does make for such an easy target. He beats himself up so much that it’s almost an unfair fight when I pile on.”</p>
<p>“Albert,” Dale said wearily, “please just promise me that you won’t say anything like that to Harry again.”</p>
<p>“Okay, I won’t.”</p>
<p>“I mean it. I don’t want him ever thinking there was anything he could have done to stop me. Because there wasn’t. I got myself into that situation, no one else did. And if it weren’t for Harry, I wouldn’t be here now.”</p>
<p>“I believe you.” They paused again, then Albert asked, “So how are you doing now, anyway? You sound, uh, coherent , anyway. But you don’t really sound like yourself.”</p>
<p>“I’m not.” Talking to Albert, Dale could be honest about his mental state in a way he couldn’t quite bring himself to be with Harry. Harry was too invested in his well-being, and Dale hated to feel like he was letting him down by still being so damaged. Albert was different. It wasn’t that Albert didn’t care, but he did at least have a bit of healthy distance. So Dale went on, “I don’t think I ever will be myself again. I don’t know if I even still have a self.”</p>
<p>“It hasn’t been that long,” Albert said reasonably. “Maybe you just need some more time. Do you, uh, want to talk about what happened?”</p>
<p>“No.” Talking about it, even in the vague way he had to Dr. Sherman, just seemed to give the darkness more power, to sharpen its outline.</p>
<p>“Okay.” Albert sounded relieved. “Well, if you ever do…”</p>
<p>“Thank you, Albert.” Wanting to change the subject, Dale asked, “How have you been?”</p>
<p>Albert launched into a long monologue about cases and office gossip about some people Dale only vaguely remembered, and others he was fairly certain he had never met at all. Dale only half-listened to the words but let Albert’s acerbic tone wash over him. It was a strangely comforting sound.</p>
<p>“So finally Gordon ended up getting the hearing aid, but he says it makes it sound like everyone is speaking Japanese,” Albert finished, adding, “Speaking of which, I have to head out for a staff meeting. But you take care of yourself, Coop. And let Harry take care of you, got it?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Dale said, just as the door opened. “He just came back, by the way.”</p>
<p>Harry, carrying two cups of coffee and a bag of what were most likely donuts, did not look happy that Dale had announced his return.</p>
<p>“Can I talk to him again for a minute?” Albert was asking. “I’m sure that will make his day.”</p>
<p>“All right.”</p>
<p>“Glad you’re back, Coop.”</p>
<p>“Thank you, Albert. Here he is.”</p>
<p>After some coaxing, Harry took the phone from Dale and had a brief, almost civil conversation with Albert. After ending the call, Harry even tried to defend Albert being incommunicado for so long. Not that he needed to defend it. Dale understood why Albert hadn’t called before. It had to be disconcerting to speak to a friend who had been rendered unrecognizable. Dale understood that reaction a lot better than he could understand Harry’s continued devotion. Sometimes he wondered how Harry could stand being around him at all.</p>
<p>After Albert’s call, things were uneventful for the next couple of weeks, until that day in the mall food court. Dale was sitting at a table, waiting for Harry to return with their lunches, when he overheard the teenage boys at the next table laughing at him and his scarred face. Those kinds of incidents happened rather frequently, and they generally didn’t bother Dale. What he looked like, and what other people thought of what he looked like, seemed like such a trivial matter in comparison to everything else that was on his mind. But he knew negative reactions to his appearance bothered Harry on some deep, visceral level. He wasn’t sure why it bothered Harry so much, but it clearly did, and now Harry was rapidly approaching his table. Dale froze, silently willing the boys to at least be quieter with their mockery. But they weren’t, and of course Harry heard them, and of course he lost it.</p>
<p>The ferocity of Harry’s reaction was more than Dale had expected. He leapt to his feet as Harry knocked the boys’ food to the floor and put the fear of God in them with his deadly low voice. The boys ran for their lives, and everyone at the adjacent tables was staring, and Dale just wanted to leave.</p>
<p>“Harry. Please, let’s just get out of here.” Dale’s voice and his hand on Harry’s arm stirred Harry into movement, and they left the food court. Dale didn’t dare take his hand off Harry’s arm, not sure where they were going or what else Harry was going to do.</p>
<p>Katie, the barista he and Harry had befriended, followed them. Her sincere sympathy made Dale feel even worse. He hated being seen as a victim, when Harry was the one who had been made to suffer. But Katie did make the good suggestion of hiding out in the mall’s employee locker room. Dale just wanted to be away from everyone but Harry.</p>
<p>In the locker room, Harry slumped onto a bench, looking completely defeated, and Dale sat next to him.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry, Coop.”</p>
<p>“Harry, you can’t do things like that.”.</p>
<p>“I know,” Harry sad, his voice thick with remorse. “I just couldn’t stand hearing those stupid kids say those things about you.”</p>
<p>“What strangers think of me is of no consequence.”</p>
<p>“It is to me. After everything you went through, you shouldn’t have to hear people talk about it when they have no idea – like it’s nothing –” Harry broke off. He seemed crushed under the weight of the sorrow he was carrying. Dale himself was be incapable of feeling much of anything anymore, but it seemed that Harry had somehow soaked in all the grief and anger he should have and was feeling it for him. Dale wanted to tell Harry to stop caring about him so damn much, to stop suffering from pain that wasn’t even his own. But he just put an arm around Harry’s shoulder.</p>
<p>Harry melted against him, and Dale could feel that he was shaking. He tightened his hold, remembering how Harry had clung to him that night in his hospital room. Maybe this was one way he could try to relieve some of the burden Harry was carrying, through simple touch. That seemed to be something else that Dale was mostly incapable of now. He felt so much like a stranger inside his own skin that he hadn’t been able to return to the easy casual contact he and Harry had once shared. But he could make an effort, since it seemed to be important to Harry.</p>
<p>After a few minutes, Harry apologized again, Dale made him promise not to do anything else that would endanger his job, and they stood up to leave. As they walked out of the locker room and toward the main part of the mall, Dale felt a heavy reluctance settle over him. He didn’t want to be around people anymore, people who might stare at him and upset Harry, or even just people going about their normal happy lives filled with shopping and laughter and other trivial things. He didn’t want to see the brightly colored store displays or hear the pop music piped in on the radio or smell that commercial scent of plastic merchandise and greasy food. He just wanted somewhere dark and quiet and alone. So he made a casual excuse to Harry about wanting to go home. Harry didn’t buy the excuse and insisted on walking Dale home, so Dale let him.</p>
<p>When Dale was alone in the apartment, he closed the curtains and laid down on the couch. Dark and quiet and alone. He felt exhausted. There was no reason for it because he hadn’t been doing anything for years. But he felt the exhaustion nevertheless, crouching on his chest like a beast and pinning him down. He closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure if he fell asleep or not. Sleep and wakefulness had merged into a dark void and swallowed him. He stayed there for unmarked hours, only getting up when he heard Harry’s footsteps on the stairs, coming back from the end of his shift. Dale quickly got up and drew back the curtains, then opened the door to their kitchen-closet so he could pretend he had been in the middle of making coffee. The least he could do for Harry was to try to be okay.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next morning, Dale got up at his normal time, but sat at the table drinking coffee while Harry went about his morning routine. He still felt that reluctance to go to the mall, or to go anywhere. The thought of it was overwhelming.</p><p> As Harry put on his shoes to head to work, he looked at Dale expectantly. “I have a travel mug if you want to take that coffee with you…”</p><p>“No, thank you. I’m going to stay home today.”</p><p>Harry looked a bit concerned, but he was patient as usual. “Okay. You have my work number if you need anything.”</p><p>After Harry left, Dale got back into his position on the couch. He felt that he was letting Harry down. But he just couldn’t keep up the façade anymore. That was why he was so exhausted, he realized. He had been spending more energy than he had realized on making Harry think he was doing better than he really was, by tagging along at the mall and chatting with the workers and pretending to be a normal person. And he couldn’t keep that up indefinitely. Maybe this was better for Harry in the long run. He had, after all, been giving Harry false hope that he had a chance of recovering and becoming something like the person he had once been. Maybe it was better if Harry saw him as the washed-up piece of once-human flotsam he really was. Maybe then Harry would give up on him.</p><p>It was, Dale realized, the first time he had been alone since leaving the hospital, other than those few sleepless nights he had spent in the apartment while Harry had been out working the night shift. Not only had he been fooling Harry about how well he was doing, but he had been fooling himself too. Harry’s constant presence had been like a tourniquet, but now that they were spending time apart, Dale could feel his soul rapidly bleeding out. The darkness whose edge he had been walking along now rose up and engulfed him. It wasn’t sadness or anger or fear or any emotion he could name. It was an emptiness, but not one defined by the lack of something. Instead, it was an active, seeking, gnawing thing, painful like an empty stomach. Harry had been keeping the monster at bay, but Dale couldn’t ask him to do that forever. It was time for Dale to become better acquainted with his enemy.</p><p>So for the next few days, he stayed at home, curled up in his fetal position on the couch, while Harry went to work. Dale didn’t want Harry to know the depths to which he had sunk, so he always set an alarm to go off fifteen minutes before Harry’s shift ended and dragged himself up to make a fresh pot of coffee. That way, when Harry got home, he would find Dale up and alert, drinking coffee at the kitchen table.</p><p>Despite this ruse, Harry grew more obviously worried by the day. One morning, he gently cajoled Dale to come with him to the mall. Dale refused. When Harry pushed him again, Dale snapped something about the incident at the food court. Harry apologized again for his public outburst and earnestly promised not to do it again. Dale immediately regretted bringing it up. It wasn’t Harry’s fault that he couldn’t bring himself to leave the apartment, but now Harry was going to think it was. Harry begged him to go somewhere, not the mall, but anywhere, and Dale still refused. Harry started grasping at straws, saying they could make an appointment with the plastic surgeon, and Dale ruthlessly shot him down again.</p><p>“What is the problem?” Harry asked, desperation audible in his voice. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”</p><p>“You can’t help me anyway, Harry.” Dale meant it as a release, so that Harry would stop taking responsibility for his well-being, but of course that’s not how Harry took it. He looked like he had just been kicked in the shins, and Dale immediately felt guilty. He couldn’t stand looking at the hurt in Harry’s face, so he reminded Harry he was going to be late for work. All Dale wanted was to be alone with his darkness, so that it would focus its malevolent energy on consuming him and not on taking potshots at Harry.</p><p>Harry left abruptly, which was unusual enough that Dale wondered if he had finally reached the end of Harry’s seemingly infinite reserves of patience. Maybe the truth of his words had sunk in, and Harry had realized that there truly was nothing he could do to help Dale. It would initially be hard for Harry to forsake what he saw as his duty to Dale, but Dale hoped that, in the long run, Harry would be able to forget about him and move on with his life. Dale went to lie down on his customary place on the couch, waiting for the dark tide of emptiness to come in. Instead of the darkness, though, what he saw when he closed his eyes was Harry’s wounded expression, and in place of the emptiness he just felt terrible about how he was treating Harry.</p><p>He had been wrong, though, about Harry giving up on him. When Harry came home that day, he had an air of renewed determination about him. After some awkward back-and-forth, Harry asked Dale if he would be willing to see Dr. Sherman in the morning. It turned out he had called her from work to schedule an appointment. Dale agreed to go. Harry looked like he was going to try to fight Dale’s depression with his bare hands if that’s what it took, so going to another medical appointment was the least Dale could do. Besides, he still felt awful about upsetting Harry.</p><p>They drove to Medical Lake the next morning. As they waited to see Dr. Sherman, Harry seemed to be on edge. Maybe it was the lingering tension between them, or maybe it was being back on the hospital grounds. Dale didn’t have particularly strong feelings about the hospital, given that most of the time he had spent there he had barely been aware of where he was, but it was probably different for Harry. He remembered Harry coming to see him every day, bringing him coffee, talking to him, holding his hand, all while having no reason to believe it was doing any good. Dale felt another pang of regret for rejecting Harry’s efforts to help him. He turned to Harry and was on the verge of saying something about it when the receptionist called his name. His fake name, that is. Harry gave him an encouraging smile, and Dale was escorted into Dr. Sherman’s office.</p><p>“Dan, it’s good to see you,” Dr. Sherman said, gesturing for him to sit. “How are you?”</p><p>“I’m fine,” he said automatically.</p><p>Dr. Sherman eased him into the conversation by talking about the weather and the bumper crop of zucchini the hospital garden was yielding, before settling down to business.</p><p>“So how are you feeling these days?”</p><p>For once, Dan had an actual emotion to report besides the crushing emptiness that usually overwhelmed everything else, so he went with, “I’ve been feeling guilty.”</p><p>“About what?”</p><p>“Harry.” He took a deep breath. “We had a fight yesterday morning. Well, I fought with him anyway. He didn’t fight back. But I said some things that upset him.”</p><p>“What did you say?”</p><p>“That he couldn’t help me. That really hurt him, I could tell. And it’s not even true. All he does is help me.”</p><p>“If it’s not true,” Dr. Sherman prodded gently, “why did you say it?”</p><p>“Because I want him to stop.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>It was a simple question, but Dale found it difficult to answer. On some deep survival level, the last thing he wanted was for Harry to stop helping him, because without Harry he would be truly lost. But he couldn’t justify the toll that his state of mind was taking on Harry. Instead of answering directly, he decided to ask a question of his own. “Dr. Sherman, how does Harry seem to you?”</p><p>“He’s worried about you.”</p><p>“I know, but – do you think he’s depressed too? Because I know he isn’t happy.”</p><p>Dr. Sherman leaned forward a bit. “I can’t diagnose someone who isn’t my patient. It would be unethical. But I hear you saying that you’re concerned about Harry’s well-being. What is it that worries you?”</p><p>“He’s given up everything because of me. He left the only home he ever knew. He left his friends and gave up the career he loved. And now he has nothing. Nothing but me.” Dale’s voice turned bitter. “And I can’t give him anything in return, because I have nothing to give.”</p><p>“Okay, there’s a lot there,” Dr Sherman said, looking a bit surprised at actually having something substantive to discuss during a session. “Take me through it all, slowly.”</p><p>So Dale did, leaving out the parts he couldn’t talk about. He told her about how Harry had spent his whole life in Twin Peaks but had left after what happened to Dale there. He told her about how Harry had given up his career in law enforcement to work at a low-level job, just so he could keep an eye on Dale during his shifts. He told her about how Harry had no friends in town and no plans for the future and nothing to occupy him other than Dale’s recovery. It was the most speaking he’d done in five years. Dr. Sherman just listened, occasionally asking a clarifying question. She grilled him on whether Harry had a drinking problem, which seemed like an odd thing to focus on. But Dale told her honestly that he’d known Harry to occasionally drink too much before his captivity, but that he hadn’t had a drop since Dale had gone to live with him.</p><p>“Dan,” Dr. Sherman said when he was done. “You’ve now spent forty-five minutes telling me about Harry, but you’ve still hardly said a word about yourself. How are you feeling?”</p><p>“The same. Just empty. That’s the problem. I tried so hard to get better, so I can be the person Harry needs me to be. But I’ve completely failed to do it. And that’s why Harry is so miserable.”</p><p>“Okay, I think I have a pretty good sense of what’s going on here now,” Dr. Sherman said. “First of all, do you remember how we talked about how you need to live for yourself, not for someone else?”</p><p>Dale nodded.</p><p>“This is why that’s so important. You’re sick right now, and you need to focus on your own recovery. You can’t spend your energy worrying about how your state of mind is affecting someone else. You’re going to get better by focusing on your own needs, not on Harry’s. Do you understand that?”</p><p>“Yes.” It made sense on the surface, but in practice Dale didn’t see how there was any way he could ignore the impact he was having on Harry.</p><p>“Good. Now, given that you don’t feel any significant improvement in mood since you were discharged, I think it’s time to try switching up your treatment. You’ve tolerated the sertraline well so far, so I’m going to increase your dose. In addition, I’d like to move you from two therapy sessions a week to three. How does that sound to you?”</p><p>Dale shrugged. “Fine.” Giving him more of what wasn’t working didn’t seem like that sound of a treatment strategy, but he supposed doctors always felt they had to do something.</p><p>“And finally, we need to think about how to approach this situation with Harry. In general, having a supportive family member is one of the most beneficial things someone struggling with mental illness can have. But there are certain dynamics in which the relationship can itself have a negative impact on the patient’s mental health. And I think you and Harry are straying dangerously close to that territory. We have a couple of options for how to proceed. One is that we could find you an alternative transitional housing arrangement –”</p><p>“No.” Despite his misgivings about how his presence was affecting Harry’s life, Dale’s reaction to that suggestion was visceral. “I don’t want to leave Harry.” He felt his heart racing at the thought. He couldn’t imagine getting through the day without the anticipation of Harry coming home at the end of it. He mentally cursed himself for even bringing up Harry to Dr. Sherman. If he had known that it would possibly lead to them being separated, he never would have done it.</p><p>“Okay, that’s up to you. But since you want to stay, I need to talk with Harry as well, so that we can start to change the dynamic of your relationship to address these potential issues of codependency. Is it okay with you if I bring him in here with us now?”</p><p>Dale nodded reluctantly. He felt like a child who had tattled to the teacher about his best friend. Harry was going to be blindsided by this suggestion that there was something unhealthy in their relationship dynamic. But it was true, Dale realized. He couldn’t take the pressure of Harry’s happiness being dependent on his own, not when his own happiness was such an unattainable prospect. Something had to change.</p><p>Dr. Sherman guided them both through a squirm-inducing conversation about their feelings, in which Dale learned nothing. Harry said, in an awkward but heartfelt way, that he just wanted Dale to get better, which was predictable. That had never been in doubt. But he was clearly disturbed by the revelation that he had been unwittingly adding to Dale’s stress, just by caring about him so much. He also looked confused as to how he could go about changing that.</p><p>After a mercifully short time, Dale was excused so that Dr. Sherman could speak to Harry alone. Dale sat in the waiting room for only a few minutes before Harry came out, looking a bit shaken, and said it was time to go. All the way back to Spokane, Dale kept glancing at Harry, wondering what he could say. Finally, Dale decided to just come out with what had been occupying his mind for the past day. “Harry, I want to apologize for what I said yesterday. I shouldn’t take things out on you. The truth is, you have helped me. You are helping.” The words were inadequate, but saying <em>I’m only alive because of you, and if I have any soul left at all, it’s because you saved it</em> seemed overly dramatic, no matter how true they were.</p><p>Harry was apparently incapable of accepting an apology without making one of his own. “I’m sorry, too. I don’t want you to hide how you’re really feeling. And you can take as long as you need to get better. I’m not going anywhere. Okay?”</p><p>That was the problem. But Dale just nodded.</p><p>That weekend, Hawk came to visit them in Spokane. Harry had called and invited him after their appointment with Dr. Sherman, probably at her suggestion, and Hawk had come right away. Dale was glad to see him again. He had always been a good friend, to both him and Harry. Unfortunately, Harry had to work during most of the days that Hawk was in town. Although the three of them spent time together before and after Harry’s shift, for most of the day Dale and Hawk were on their own. Dale suspected that Harry had planned it that way, knowing that Dale couldn’t just wallow around in the apartment while they had a visitor.</p><p>So Dale showed Hawk around some of the places he and Harry frequented around Spokane, and they also went to some new ones. One day, they drove up Mount Spokane. As they wound up the narrow summit road in Hawk’s truck, massive evergreen trees loomed overhead. Douglas firs. Dale stared out the window at them until the forest changed to a different type with the elevation gain and then faded out into wind-sculpted shrubs clinging to the granite outcrops.</p><p>They parked at the summit and walked around to take in the view. “The mountains look like the ones around Twin Peaks,” Dale said, gazing north.</p><p>“Yeah. This is the southernmost peak in the Selkirks. The same range that surrounds Twin Peaks.” Hawk sounded cautious. He had not mentioned the town once to either Dale or Harry up to that point in his visit.</p><p>Eying the informational display at an overlook, Dale noticed it said that the view extended all the way to Canada on a clear day. Today had one of those impossibly blue Northwest summer skies, without even the memory of a cloud. “Can we see it from here?” he asked Hawk.</p><p>“Twin Peaks?” Hawk sounded surprised at the question. “Well, there’s Whitetail Mountain over there –” he pointed to a sharp-peaked mountain off on the horizon – “and the one next to it –” a slightly lower and more rounded peak – “is Blue Pine Mountain. The town is in the valley between them.”</p><p>There was a coin-operated viewfinder at the overlook. Dale didn’t even check to see if he had any quarters. He didn’t want to see any closer. He sat on the edge of the stone overlook wall, looking north, contemplating the distance. After a moment, Hawk sat next to him.</p><p>“Can you tell me more about what happened five years ago?” Dale asked suddenly.</p><p>Hawk looked at him askance. “Are you sure you want to know about that?”</p><p>“Not all of it. Just, well, what happened to Harry. To make him leave.”</p><p>“Maybe you should ask Harry about that.”</p><p>“I can’t.”</p><p>Hawk sighed. “Yeah, I guess not. Look, I don’t know if you know this already, but when you disappeared, Harry waited for you in the woods. None of us could get him to leave or even to eat anything. It was almost two days, and he was just waiting all that time.”</p><p>“I didn’t know,” Dale said softly.</p><p>“Well, then you showed up again, only of course it wasn’t you. But Harry thought it was, and he took the shadow version of you back to the Great Northern.”</p><p>“I know what happened at the Great Northern,” Dale said quickly. He sort of did, anyway. That was where he had first seen the distorted reflection of the face that wasn’t his in the spiderweb of the cracked mirror. He had been so overwhelmed with confusion and terror that his memory of what had happened that first time was hazier than for the subsequent excursions. But he did remember Harry pounding on the door and yelling his name. He wasn’t sure exactly what had happened after that, but whatever it was, Harry had been there to witness it. His stomach twisted at the thought.</p><p>“Right,” Hawk said, clearly glad he didn’t have to go into the details. “Even after that, Harry wanted to capture you, to save you somehow. It was only after, well…”</p><p>“After it became clear that there was nothing left to save,” Dale finished for him. He could hear the screams rising in agonized harmony, feel the squelching sensation of his arms buried up to the elbows in someone’s entrails, taste the coppery flavor of their blood on his lips. All the things he had never really experienced but still had to remember.</p><p>“Yeah.” Hawk was quiet for a moment. “When Harry had to give up on you, I guess he gave up on everything. He left Twin Peaks that night.”</p><p>“What about when he was in Missoula?” Dale asked. “How was he then?”</p><p>Hawk shrugged. “We only talked once in a while during that time,” he said evasively.</p><p>“But when you did talk?” Dale didn’t know why he was pressing Hawk for details he either didn’t have or didn’t want to disclose. He just had to believe that, as bad as things had been in Twin Peaks, five years had been long enough for Harry to move on.</p><p>“It was bad,” Hawk said, relenting. “You have to understand, the Twin Peaks Killer was in the news a lot.”</p><p>“Oh.” Dale hadn’t thought of that. It was mildly disturbing to think of television viewers across the country thinking he was a serial killer, but that paled in comparison to the idea of Harry seeing news coverage of it.</p><p>“Yeah. You know, that’s how he found out about the Twin Peaks Killer being taken out, the night we found you. We had been trying and trying to call him, but he saw it on the damn news.”</p><p>“So he thought –”</p><p>“That you were dead, yeah. And when he called and I told him that we found you alive, he hung up on me and drove straight to Medical Lake to see you. And he kept going to see you every single day.”</p><p>“I know,” Dale said softly. “I remember him coming to see me. At first, I was sort of locked up inside, so I couldn’t say anything or do anything to let him know I heard him. But he kept coming anyway. And if he hadn’t, I would still be there.”</p><p>“The day you drank that damn coffee he brought you.” Hawk chuckled. “He called me that day, and it was the first time I’d heard him sound happy in five years.”</p><p>Dale stared out at the distant peaks. “You know I’m not the same as I was,” he said to Hawk, more as a statement than as a question.</p><p>Hawk nodded. “You’ve changed. Of course you have, after the journey you’ve taken.”</p><p>“I don’t think Harry realizes that. I think – I think he misses me. Who I was. And he can’t see that I’ll never be that again.”</p><p>Hawk shook his head. “I’ve known Harry for many years. He’s a man who sees things as they are. He sees your spirit. He knows who you are.”</p><p>“I want to be the way he sees me. I just can’t.” Dale’s voice was thick with frustration.</p><p>Hawk turned to look at him. “Your journey isn’t over yet, Cooper. Harry will wait for you, just like he did before.”</p><p>Dale thought of Harry sitting alone in the woods, waiting for him to come back. Bringing him coffee every day in the hospital, waiting for him to come back. Whatever morsel of hope or fear he had had in the back of his mind, that maybe Harry would just give up on him and move on with his life, now seemed utterly impossible. Maybe Hawk was right, and he just had to complete his journey so he could get to where Harry was waiting for him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the week after Hawk’s visit, Dale felt – not better, exactly – but less bad. Maybe it was the lingering aftereffects of Hawk’s wisdom and compassion, helping soothe both him and Harry. Or maybe it was that Dr. Sherman’s antidepressants were finally kicking in. But maybe it was just that Dale had become accustomed to the yawning emptiness inside him. Even the sharpest blade was eventually dulled by overuse, and he had spent enough time with the void that the wounds it inflicted were no longer quite so raw. He still had no desire to go out and be around people while Harry was away at work, but now he did have a bit more energy. Not enough to do anything of substance, but enough that he no longer felt compelled to spend all day curled up in the fetal position on the couch. So he started slowly reintroducing external stimuli into his days, things to think about now that he seemed to have regained his mind enough to think with. He started reading books again, long absorbing works of nonfiction that he checked out from the library when he and Harry ventured there before work or on Harry’s days off. He flipped through newspapers and magazines that Harry brought home from the newsstand. He watched TV, finding some comfort in hearing human voices that he didn’t have to respond to during the long quiet days in the apartment.</p>
<p>Late one afternoon, he was clicking listlessly through the channels, trying to find something to occupy the next hour before Harry returned from work. All he could find were sensationalistic talk shows, which he had no desire to watch. Suddenly, as he flipped back to the start of the series of channels, he stopped abruptly at the sight of his own photo on the TV screen. He dropped the remote control. It was the photo from his old FBI ID, the one in which he was grinning at the camera without a care in the world. Had he ever really been that young? Over the photo, a title card faded in, proclaiming “Inside the Horror: An Exclusive Look at the Twin Peaks Killer.” In a skillful bit of editing, those overlaid words made the grin of the Dale in the photo take on a sinister look. Now it looked like the face Dale had seen in the mirrors, the one that he still saw in his nightmares. Involuntarily, his hands went up to his own face to trace the scar tissue with his fingertips. He couldn’t look away from the screen, just like he hadn’t been able to look away during all those murders he had been forced to witness.</p>
<p>The title screen dissolved away into a spooky establishing shot of Twin Peaks on a misty day. Dale recognized the location. It was the “Welcome to Twin Peaks” sign on the highway coming into town, with Whitetail Mountain and Blue Pine Mountain towering atmospherically above. “Few serial killers have captured the public’s imagination like the Twin Peaks Killer,” a deep-voiced narrator said in voiceover. “Others may have been more prolific, but few have been more brutal. For five years, the quaint mountain town of Twin Peaks, Washington, was haunted by this evil specter.” In another top-notch bit of editing, there was an establishing shot of Whitetail Falls, which was gradually tinted red until it appeared as though the waterfall had turned to blood. “Perhaps the most fascinating part of the case is the identity of the killer.” Dale’s photo appeared again. “No one would have predicted that Dale Cooper, described as a model agent by his colleagues at the FBI, would turn out to be a depraved psychopath, the subject of a years-long manhunt, the top of the FBI’s own Most Wanted list. In this exclusive look, we revisit this legendary case through the eyes of the victims, and of the killer –”</p>
<p>Dale found himself running to the bathroom. He thought he was going to be sick, but he stopped short at the sight of his face in the mirror above the sink. He leaned forward, hands gripping the bathroom counter, and examined his face closely. On the surface, it appeared to be the same face he had gotten used to seeing over the past few months. The one with the hideous scars that terrorized small children and prompted the mockery of teenagers in mall food courts and whispers from strangers in the street. But somehow, he felt that he could now glimpse the superstructure lying beneath the ravaged flesh, as if he had X-ray vision. And what was underneath was that same old face, the one that he thought he had stripped away. The one that had been stolen from him and now belonged to the creature with the sinister memento mori grin.</p>
<p>In response to the rising wave of panic he felt, Dale’s first crazed instinct was to smash the mirror and use the shards of broken glass to dig deeper into his flesh, all the way down to the skull this time. But he managed to hold back, because he retained just enough presence of mind to realize that Harry might be a tad upset to come home and find Dale bleeding out all over his bathroom floor.</p>
<p>Harry. The thought of him sent another jolt of panic through Dale. Harry would be home soon. More than anything else in the world, he wanted to see Harry, but he very much did not want Harry to see him like this. It would be like the Great Northern all over again. With that memory, his grip on reality loosened further. What if all this time, his shadow self had been hiding in plain sight, just beneath the surface of his skin? That would explain why he felt like a stranger to himself, and why that terrible empty darkness was always coiled up so tightly within him, ready to spring out at the first chance of an opening. He had known all along that something was deeply wrong with him, and maybe that was what it was. Maybe now the thing would burst forth and consume him completely. He could feel himself dissolving away. In the mirror, he saw that his newly restored face was grinning. An exclusive look through the eyes of the killer, just like the TV had said.</p>
<p>He turned the decaying remnants of his will on one objective. He had to get away. If he was the evil shadow thing, or it was him, he couldn’t let Harry come home to it. He would lock himself back inside the Black Lodge forever before he would let any harm come to Harry.</p>
<p>And just like that, it was clear to him where he had to go. The only place he could go, the only place where a monstrosity like him belonged. He left the bathroom, left the apartment, went out on the street, turned north.</p>
<p>He felt like he was walking on hot coals, but the pain didn’t bother him. The sights of the city and the sounds of the traffic faded away into static. All he was aware of was the magnetic pull of the Black Lodge, drawing him north like a compass needle. It felt almost like going home. It felt like he was already there, that he hadn’t left at all. Maybe he hadn’t.</p>
<p>The next thing he was aware of was Harry saying his name. “Coop.” And just like before, that was enough to bring Dale back to himself. He gradually resurfaced, climbing the lifeline of Harry’s voice, sounding distant at first but gradually clearer. “I’m here, okay? Hawk said you told him you could always tell when I was there in the hospital. And I’m not leaving you, not ever. No matter how long it takes, I’ll wait for you. But if you can – if you can , please come back now.”</p>
<p>Dale could see in his mind, as clearly as if he had been there, Harry sitting alone in the woods at night, staring into the place where Dale had disappeared. He wasn’t going to make Harry wait for him this time. With some effort, he pulled himself back into his body, feeling the familiar warmth of Harry’s hand clasping his. The blurs of shapes and colors around him sharpened, and he looked into Harry’s pale, wide-eyed face. “Harry,” Dale managed to say.</p>
<p>He was dimly aware of Dr. Sherman saying something from where she was standing by the door of the room. A medical exam room. So he was back at Medical Lake.</p>
<p>“Are you okay?” Harry asked him. There was such relief in his voice, tinged with such worry, that Dale could feel the full brunt of the hell that he had apparently just put Harry through with his little mental breakdown. Much to his own surprise, Dale felt tears welling up. He hadn’t cried once since, well, he couldn’t remember. He hadn’t thought he was even capable of it anymore. Harry’s arms were immediately around him, and Dale let himself sink against Harry.</p>
<p>“On TV, they were showing pictures of – of what happened in Twin Peaks,” Dale said, by way of explanation for his irrational behavior. He felt it was important for Harry to know that he hadn’t just lost his mind for no reason, even if the reason was somewhat ridiculous.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have had to see that.” Harry was understanding, as always. But Dale still felt the need to explain.</p>
<p>“When I saw that, it was like I was suddenly back there. I wondered if I had ever left. I couldn’t tell if I was the real me or the other one. I realized that there was no way to know. Back then, I could see through its eyes whenever it killed, so maybe I was seeing through its eyes again. Maybe I had finally become that thing, or maybe we were the same all along.” He abruptly realized that maybe he was explaining too much. He didn’t want Harry to know that he had hallucinated, that he had seen his old face emerge from beneath his scars. That would worry Harry. And he definitely didn’t want Harry to know that he had, however briefly, considered slicing up his own face again. That would really worry Harry.</p>
<p>So he left it at that and moved on to the rest of the story. “And then I realized that you were coming home soon. And I thought if there was any chance I could be that thing, or it could be me, I had to leave before you got home. Because there’s no way I could watch it—” Dale broke off as he remembered the terror he had felt that his shadow self had been lying in wait all this time just so it could murder Harry in front of him. If the thing was still alive and determined to destroy his soul, that would be a very effective way of accomplishing that goal. But Harry was here, holding him, so he just said, “Not to you. So I left. I started walking toward Twin Peaks. I thought maybe I could lock myself up in the Black Lodge again and then maybe everyone—” especially Harry – “would be safe.” Hearing his own thought process aloud, Dale realized how illogical it all sounded. “I don’t know what I was thinking. It would have taken me days to walk to Twin Peaks.”</p>
<p>“That thing is dead,” Harry said. With his face pressed up against Harry’s chest, Dale could feel the comforting vibrations of Harry’s words. “And it was never you. So there’s no reason for you to ever go back to the Black Lodge or to Twin Peaks.” Harry’s tone was resolute on that point, implying that he would see to it.</p>
<p>“I know that now. I just wasn’t thinking clearly. I’m sorry, Harry. I keep hurting you, over and over again.” Now that the initial relief of the ordeal being over was subsiding, Dale once again felt the miserable old feeling of guilt over how difficult he was making Harry’s life.</p>
<p>Harry stepped back, putting his hands on Dale’s shoulders. “It’s not your fault,” he said earnestly. “Just, if that happens again, if you’re not sure who you are, come find me. I’ll remind you.” With a soft touch of his thumbs, he brushed away Dale’s tears. It was perhaps the most tender gesture Dale had ever been the recipient of, from anyone. He remembered Hawk’s words. <em>Harry sees things as they are. Harry knows who you are</em>. He wished that that were true. He wanted to be as Harry saw him, who Harry thought he was. From their very first meeting, Harry had beheld him with something like awe, and that had never changed, no matter how much Dale had changed. Maybe at one time Dale had been capable of living up to the high regard that Harry held for him, but those days were long gone. He would never again be worthy of Harry’s adulation. That made those looks Harry bestowed on him – the kind he was giving him now, like he was the eighth wonder of the world – difficult to bear.</p>
<p>Dr. Sherman came in and interrogated Dale about his latest episode. He answered her questions as honestly as he felt he could, leaving out the hallucinations and the compulsion for self-harm. It was only when Harry asked the doctor about Dale’s feet that Dale noticed that his feet were in bandages and were in a rather painful condition. Apparently, he had walked barefoot for miles on hot pavement. He really had completely lost it. No wonder Harry had been so worried.</p>
<p>A bit distracted, Dale tuned out most of what Dr. Sherman was saying about his treatment, but his attention came crashing back when he heard the doctor say he needed to stay in the hospital overnight for observation.</p>
<p>“I’d rather just go home with Harry,” Dale said, instinctively grabbing Harry’s arm. He felt that his connection to reality was rather tenuous at the moment, and he was alarmed by the prospect of having to somehow make it through the night without Harry nearby.</p>
<p>Fortunately, Dr. Sherman said that Harry could stay the night. Harry seemed even more relieved by that than Dale was. Later, as Dale lay in his hospital bed, he stared across the darkened room at Harry’s shape on the cot. He tried to imagine what Harry’s evening had been like, when he came home and found that Dale wasn’t there. He must have been frantic. Apparently, he had even snapped at Dr. Sherman, judging from the fact that he had apologized to her for it.</p>
<p>Dale still didn’t understand why his well-being was so important to Harry, but it obviously was. The least he could do to show his gratitude for that care would be to stop being so damn crazy and self-destructive, but that seemed to be beyond him. Something as innocuous as a television program was enough to send him off the deep end. How would he ever be able to function normally again when his grip on reality was so razor-thin?</p>
<p>“Harry?” Dale whispered. He didn’t think Harry was asleep, but he didn’t want to wake him if he was.</p>
<p>“Yeah? You need something?” Harry rolled over, about to get out of bed so he could get Dale whatever he needed.</p>
<p>“I just –” Dale realized that he didn’t really have anything to say. He had simply wanted to hear Harry’s voice. But there were things he could say, that he probably should say a lot more often.  “I realize it probably doesn’t seem like it, but I do appreciate everything you do for me. I know I haven’t made things easy for you.”</p>
<p>“Don’t worry about that. You haven’t done anything wrong.” Harry sounded as if he really believed that.</p>
<p>All the things Dale had done wrong played through his mind, but he didn’t try to argue the point. Instead, he just wondered, as he often did, why Harry was so devoted to him. He could almost understand it now, because their lives were so entangled that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Codependency, as Dr. Sherman called it. But the only reason it was like that was because Harry had made it that way, by never giving up on him despite having had ample opportunity to do so on multiple occasions.</p>
<p>“Hawk told me that you waited for me in the woods for over a day, back in Glastonbury Grove,” Dale said slowly.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I did.” Harry was matter-of-fact about it, as it had been the obvious thing to do.</p>
<p>“And then you kept coming back to see me in the hospital, every single day.”</p>
<p>“Of course. What else would I do?” Harry wasn’t getting it.</p>
<p>“I haven’t done anything to deserve that kind of loyalty.” Dale let the unasked question hang in the air. Why had Harry refused to leave him, right from the start? Was it because Harry felt responsible for what had happened to him? Because Dale would absolve him of that. Or was it just because Harry felt bad that there had been no one else to wait for Dale? Harry was such a good man, maybe he was just motivated to act by the compassion he felt for such a lost soul.</p>
<p>“You deserve it,” Harry said simply. “Just because of who you are. You’re worth it.”</p>
<p>Hawk’s words rang in Dale’s ears again. <em>Harry knows who you are.</em> Dale felt certain that it was some quality of Harry’s – his sense of duty or his kindness – that motivated his remarkable and unwavering commitment to Dale. Instead, Harry was deflecting that away, insisting instead that Dale had some quality that made it only natural and inevitable that Harry would give him everything he had, that made him deserving and worthy of Harry’s devotion. It made Dale feel like the world’s biggest fraud. He had swept into Twin Peaks all those years ago with his suit and slicked-back hair and FBI credentials, and had somehow unwittingly conned Harry into believing that he was someone special. He cringed now to remember Harry’s admiring tone as he said <em>Best lawman I’ve ever known</em>. Hell, he had believed that about himself back then. He had been so damn sure of himself and his abilities. But the entire house of cards had been built on nothing more solid than his better-than-average intuition, which had always served him so well, until it so catastrophically failed him. And now he knew better, but Harry didn’t. Somehow, Harry still believed in him. Dale was glad that the room was dark, because he didn’t think he could stand seeing that earnest belief on Harry’s face right now.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Just a warning: this chapter is quite dark, including explicit suicidal ideation.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next morning, Harry drove them home, rolling the truck up over the curb next to their building so he could let Dale out five feet closer to the door. “Harry,” Dale said, half-exasperated, half-amused. “Are you aware that this is not a valid parking space?”</p><p>“Yeah. Just wanted to get you as close to the door as possible.” Harry handed Dale his crutches. Dale was surprised at how much damage he had managed to do to his feet. Even with the crutches, every step he took was accompanied by a sharp jab of pain. Harry winced sympathetically at his every footfall. When Dale made it to the staircase, he handed the crutches to Harry, who took them upstairs. Dale had to sit down on the stairs for a moment to recover before starting the climb up. He stared out the doorway at Harry’s truck, brazenly parked on the sidewalk.</p><p>As Harry came back down and hovered uncertainly, trying to figure out how he could help, Dale told him to go move his truck. He really didn’t want Harry to get a parking ticket. He realized how inconsequential a parking ticket would be in the grand scheme of things, but at least it was a misfortune that could be avoided. Harry humored him and complied with his request. As Harry was moving the truck, Dale realized that he needed to get a move on, otherwise Harry would probably insist on carrying him upstairs when he returned. So he started limping up the stairs, but didn’t make too much progress before Harry came up behind him and offered his shoulder for support. Dale reluctantly took it, recognizing that, just like with everything else, he wasn’t going to make it without Harry’s help. It was still slow going, and Harry kept apologizing until Dale finally told him, with the utmost affection, to stop.  </p><p>Dale had to practically order Harry to go back to work the next day. Before he left, Harry assembled a large quantity of supplies that Dale might need throughout the day so he wouldn’t have to get up too often. Then he hung around for a few more minutes, clearly putting off his departure as long as possible. It was hard to blame him for his reluctance, since Dale had demonstrated that he couldn’t be trusted to remain sane and safe at home, but Dale finally succeeded in shooing Harry out the door. And so began his two weeks of recovery from the injuries to his feet.</p><p>Much to his own surprise, Dale’s mental state was better than it had been in the previous weeks. He felt tired, like he was recovering from the flu, but the existential despair that had been his constant companion had subsided. Maybe the breakdown had somehow reset his mind. Or maybe it was that his mind was now occupied by the physical pain from his injuries. It was just like how, that night in the woods, slicing away at the skin of his face had had a similar centering effect. It seemed that the more physical pain he was in, the less he was plagued by spiritual pain. But he couldn’t tell Harry that, because he didn’t want Harry to worry about him intentionally harming himself again.</p><p>Harry called every day during his lunch break and kept him well-supplied with reading material and coffee and snacks. But towards the end of the two weeks, Dale felt himself getting restless. Back when he had been able to come and go as he pleased, he had wanted nothing more than to stay in the safe space of the apartment. But now that he was forced to stay home to recover from his injuries, the walls were starting to close in a bit. So one morning, as he sat on the couch drinking his morning coffee, he said to Harry, “I think I’ll go to the park later today.”</p><p>“Yeah?” Harry looked up from his own coffee. “It does look like it’s going to be a nice day.” His tone was casual, but he was clearly thrilled that Dale was planning on doing something other than moping around the apartment.</p><p>“Yes. Just for an hour or two. I’ll be back well before you get home.” He wanted to assure Harry that he wouldn’t be coming home to find the place empty again.</p><p>Harry nodded. “Well, don’t walk too much. Your feet are still healing.” They were still a bit sore, but Dale was confident he would have no trouble making it across the street to the park.</p><p>That afternoon, Dale made the excursion. He walked slowly and limped a bit but made it over to the falls easily enough. It was strange being outside without Harry. Normally, Harry was his guide to the outside world, translating it so it made sense to Dale. Standing at the falls overlook, Dale enjoyed the feeling of the sunshine. It was indeed a nice day. He still had some restless energy, and he felt that he could walk a bit further. So he followed the route he and Harry often walked together, across the bridge over to the sculpture garden.</p><p>There, sitting at tables scattered around the garden, were office workers lingering over their lunches. As always when encountering crowds of people, Dale kept his face averted so as to not attract attention. But, in the corner of his eyes, he thought he glimpsed a familiar face. He stopped short and looked again. Yes, it was the old man from the hospital at Medical Lake, the one he had played chess with. He was sitting alone at a table, and he appeared to be folding origami. He had seen Dale too, and he waved cheerfully. Dale approached the old man slowly and sat down across from him at the table.</p><p>“Hey, Danny boy,” the man said. “Or are you back to being Dale now?”</p><p>Dale stared at the man. There was something off-kilter about him. Dale hadn’t noticed it before, perhaps because he had himself been so off-kilter at the time, or because everyone seemed that way in a psychiatric hospital. But here, in the bustle of a city park with people all around in business suits discussing sales figures, the otherworldliness of the older man stood in out sharp relief. There was a sort of shimmering quality around him, as if the mundane light of the everyday world was being forced to detour slightly around him.</p><p>“You’re not real,” Dale said flatly.</p><p>“Huh,” the old man scoffed dismissively. “Realer than you.”</p><p>Dale turned to the nearest passerby, a young man walking by with a skateboard and a soda. “Excuse me,” Dale said. “Do you see an older gentleman sitting across the table from me?”</p><p>“Uhh, no,” the passerby said, obviously wondering if it was a trick question. “There’s no one there, man.”</p><p>“Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”</p><p>“Sure thing, man. Take it easy.” The young man gave him one last confused look and continued on his way.</p><p>Dale pointedly turned back to the old man, who shrugged dismissively. “Just cause I’m in your head don’t mean I ain’t real.”</p><p>“You’re from – from there.” Even in the sunshine, Dale didn’t want to say the name aloud.</p><p>The man laughed. “Well, I did tell you I been in and outta the cuckoo’s nest my whole life.”</p><p>Dale cast his eyes down at the man’s hands. He was indeed folding origami, although Dale couldn’t see what the shape was. He felt a heavy weight settle over him. It was the other shoe dropping, the one he had been half-waiting for this whole time. He fervently hoped that he was hallucinating again, because all that meant was that he was crazy, which he already knew. If he wasn’t hallucinating and was instead actually conversing with a denizen of the Black Lodge, that portended something far worse. “If I’m seeing you,” Dale said slowly, “does that mean I’m going back there? Or –” an even worse thought occurred to him – “am I still in there?”</p><p>“You’ve got it backwards, upside-down, and inside-out,” the man said. He held up his origami in front of Dale and made a dramatic flourishing motion, like a magician’s legerdemain, to reveal the final fold. It was an owl. “You were never <em>in</em> the Lodge,” the man continued. “The Lodge is in <em>you</em>.” With that, he tucked the origami owl into Dale’s shirt pocket.</p><p>Dale had thought that his mind had already conjured up all the dreadful possibilities, but this was one that had not occurred to him. “You mean I’m carrying the Lodge around with me?”</p><p>“Explains a lot, don’t it?”</p><p>Now that he thought about it, it did. It explained why he didn’t feel like he belonged anywhere, why he didn’t even recognize himself anymore. He had known he was damaged, but it turned out it was more than that. The darkness and emptiness that he had felt inside was a real thing, and it was in the process of consuming him.</p><p>“What can I do?” Dale asked, his voice rising in panic. A few people sitting at nearby tables looked at him askance. “How do I get it out of me?”</p><p>“Easy,” the man said, starting a new origami fold. “You don’t. She’s a jealous lover, the Lodge. Once she gets her claws in you, she never lets go.”</p><p>The old man’s words had the ring of truth about them. It was the truth Dale had been trying to deny all this time, but he couldn’t pretend any longer. "I can't live like this," he said. Standing up, he walked away as quickly as he could.</p><p>“See you next time!” the old man called after him. It sounded like a threat.</p><p>Dale walked without any conscious awareness of where he was going. His head was spinning. Now that he had a name for the formless void inside him, it had crystallized into shape, and he could feel its jagged edges. Any spark of hope that he had once had that someday he would be capable of once again becoming a full human being was extinguished. He was nothing but a host for a parasite, and he would never be anything more than that.</p><p>And what was worse, he now wondered if his earlier hallucination had been unmasking some deeper reality. When he had seen his old face, the face of the Twin Peaks Killer, in the mirror, maybe that meant that his shadow self’s homicidal impulse was also hidden inside him, lying in wait. In any case, the revelation that he had the Black Lodge within him was enough to mean he was a danger to everyone around him. And that meant, primarily, that he was a danger to Harry.</p><p>Dale arrived at his destination without any conscious awareness of where he had been going. It was the Greyhound bus station. He knew what he had to do. He went inside and walked up to the counter.</p><p>“I’d like a one-way ticket for the next bus out of town, please,” he said to the middle-aged woman behind the counter.</p><p>“You mean the 3:15 to –”</p><p>Dale cut her off. “Yes. That one.” He didn’t know and didn’t care where the bus was going.</p><p>“Okay.” The woman eyed him dubiously from beneath her mascara-caked lashes. Her hair was too blond, her lipstick too red, and her nails too long. “How far are you going?” she rasped in a whiskey voice.</p><p>“The end of the line.” He paid for the ticket. Harry always made sure he had a couple hundred dollars in cash with him.</p><p>Dale sat in a molded plastic seat, the smell of cigarette smoke hanging in the bus station’s air. He closed his eyes and rubbed the paper of the bus ticket between his fingers. Doubts were beginning to creep into his mind. He had come here purely on the instinctual desire to get as far away from Harry as possible, so that he wouldn’t be able to hurt Harry. But, of course, what he was doing now would hurt Harry. He couldn’t help imagining Harry coming home from work in a few hours, to find a once-again empty apartment. Harry would immediately panic. He would have to once again do whatever he had done to find Dale when he had gone missing the last time. Only this time, he wouldn’t find him, because Dale now had enough of his wits about him that he could effectively disappear. He heard his own words to Harry, <em>I keep hurting you, over and over again</em>. Well, this would be the last time. Harry would now be free of him.</p><p>That thought should have made Dale feel better, but it didn’t. He knew that Harry wouldn’t see it as freedom. He would see it as abandonment. And this time, Dale would be hurting Harry intentionally. When it really came down to it, he wasn’t sure he was capable of doing that, not even if it would be better for Harry in the long run.</p><p>The sound of a diesel engine stirred Dale out of his reverie, and he looked up to see the 3:15 bus pulling up in front of the double glass doors that led out to the loading bay behind the station. A few passengers filed off the bus and into the station, and others headed outside to board the bus. Dale sat still, frozen with indecision.</p><p>“That’s your bus, honey.” The woman who had sold him the ticket had come out from behind the counter and was now standing over him, looking slightly concerned.</p><p>“I don’t know if I should go,” he confessed to her.</p><p>She glanced outside, where the last of the passengers were boarding and the driver was standing outside taking a smoke break. “Well, you’ve got about forty-five seconds to decide.” Her expression softened slightly when she looked back at him. Dale could smell her cheap perfume. “Look, if you have to wonder whether you should go or not, that probably means you shouldn’t. I bet you’ve got someone here who cares about you, right?”</p><p>“Yes.” He remembered promising Harry that he would be back by the time Harry got home from work, and suddenly his decision was made.</p><p>“Well, that’s all you need. Go home, okay? Otherwise, if you don’t get on that bus, I have to call the cops on you for loitering.”</p><p>He nodded. “Thank you for your kindness.”</p><p>“You’re welcome,” the woman said, sounding surprised at hearing her actions described that way. Then she added, “No refunds.”</p><p>The woman returned to the counter, and Dale sat for a moment longer to watch the bus roll off to its unknown destination. He felt at peace with his decision to stay. If nothing else, he just really wanted to see Harry.</p><p>Seeing that the woman was still watching him from behind the counter, Dale got up to leave, not doubting that she had been serious in her threat to call the police on him. He tore the bus ticket in half and dropped it in the overflowing trash can by the door as he left.</p><p>When he got home, Dale made a strong pot of coffee and sat on the couch with a cup, waiting for Harry to come home. He couldn’t tell Harry about what he had experienced. Harry, level-headed as he was, would assume that he had been hallucinating, and that would mean a return to Medical Lake, not to mention a lot of worry on Harry’s part. Now that Dale had calmed down a bit, he himself wasn’t sure that it hadn’t been a hallucination. Suddenly remembering, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the origami owl. That, at least, was real. Either that, or he was currently hallucinating the owl as well. Not knowing what else to do with it, he stashed it under a corner of his mattress.</p><p>When he heard Harry’s footsteps on the stairs, he felt an immediate lightening of the heavy load he had felt since his encounter in the park. “Hey,” Harry said as he came in.</p><p>“Hello, Harry,” Dale said, relieved at how normal his voice sounded. “How was work?”</p><p>“Meh, okay,” Harry said, kicking off his shoes and pouring himself a cup of coffee from the pot Dale had made. “A woman accidentally locked herself out of her car with her baby inside. It was pretty hot in there with all the sun, so the lady was really scared. I’ve never gotten a car door unlocked so fast.” He paused as he looked at Dale and saw something. What it was he saw, Dale had no idea, but Harry abruptly said, “Hey, are you okay?” He looked concerned.</p><p>“Yes, I’m fine,” Dale said. He thought he had been acting normally, but Harry did have an uncanny ability to pick up on his moods. Casting about for an innocuous explanation, he said, “My feet are just a bit sore. I walked further than I intended to today.” That had the virtue of being true.</p><p>“You were supposed to take it easy,” Harry said, immediately putting down his coffee and sitting next to Dale on the couch. He gestured for Dale to put his feet up so Harry could inspect them. “At least you didn’t open up any of the cuts or blisters, they still look fine,” Harry said. He kept his hand on Dale’s ankle. “Do you want some aspirin?”</p><p>“Already took some,” Dale said, which was a lie. He just wanted Harry to stay there. His proximity and the light touch were the balm Dale’s ragged nerves needed.</p><p>“Well, I’m glad you went out anyway. Just don’t walk so far next time.”</p><p>“I won’t.” Dale leaned back. “That mother was lucky you were there to help her,” he said.</p><p>“Hmm? Oh, any of the guys could have done it.”</p><p>Dale shook his head. That wasn’t what he had meant. He could picture the scene as clearly as if he had been there. The woman, screaming and crying for her baby. Harry’s steady hands working the tools to effortlessly pry open the car door, his steady voice comforting her all the while. And afterwards, assuring her that she wasn’t a bad mother just because she had made a mistake.</p><p>Sitting like this, with Harry right there, Dale could almost believe he had imagined the day’s incident. After all, it seemed impossible that something as terrible as the Black Lodge could exist in the same world with something as wonderful as Harry. But even if the dark emptiness had retreated when Harry walked through the door, Dale could feel that it was still there. He wondered if he had made a mistake, if he should have gotten on that bus after all. After all, he had long known that Harry would be better off without him, even if Harry refused to accept it. Maybe he was being selfish. He had talked himself into staying by convincing himself that he would be causing Harry too much pain by leaving. But maybe he had stayed because he himself would be in too much pain without Harry. Now he was knowingly exposing Harry to the darkness he carried within him. Maybe he should at least tell Harry about it. But at best it would upset Harry, and at worst, it would make him do something reckless to try to save Dale’s soul. And there was nothing Harry could do to save him, and nothing he could do to save himself.</p><p>That night, Dale dreamed of death. Death took the form of Laura Palmer, her face pale and perfect. She beckoned to him, and Dale felt a powerful longing to go to her. He woke up in the darkness, still feeling her cold lips pressed against his forehead. He lay awake, listening to Harry’s soft sleep-breathing, until the sun came up.</p><p>The dream changed something in him. It planted an idea in his mind, one that could not be unthought. He heard echoes of his own words to the old man in the park. <em>I can’t live like this</em>. He remembered the feel of his carotid pulse pounding against the shard of obsidian that night in the woods, when he had rejoiced at the realization that he had finally found an escape route. Maybe that had been the only possible escape all along.</p><p>For the next couple of weeks, Dale’s mind was bent on death. It seemed like such a rational solution, a way to both end his own suffering and to do the world a favor by taking out a great evil, if he was really carrying the Black Lodge within him. The only thing that stopped him was, of course, the only thing that had stopped him from smashing the bathroom mirror and cutting his throat with the shards after he had glimpsed the Twin Peaks Killer’s face in his reflection. It was the only thing that had stopped him from getting on that bus out of town. He just couldn’t bring himself to hurt Harry.</p><p>If he could only get Harry to understand why, to understand that it wasn’t Harry’s fault, to understand that this was for the best. A couple of times, when Harry was away at work, Dale even tried to write him a note. He only got as far as <em>Dear Harry</em> before giving up. He took a box of matches and burned the scraps of paper in the sink, washing the ashes down the drain so Harry wouldn’t find them.</p><p>Dale realized that he was approaching the problem backwards. First, he had to think through the mechanics of it. Then he could have a concrete scenario in mind for when he wrote the note. So he spent his long days alone at the apartment scouring the dwelling for any potential lethal implements. He opened the medicine cabinet and found nothing more potent than aspirin and Pepto-Bismol, but there was drain cleaner under the sink. He checked the strength of various fixtures on the ceiling and scoured the linen closet for materials he could use as rope. He tested the sharpness of the razor blades in the bathroom. He mulled over the simple and clean possibilities offered by plastic bags and duct tape.</p><p>One afternoon, he opened the closet and found Harry’s guns packed neatly away, along with some fishing rods and an old beat-up camera. The guns were unloaded, but he also found a box of ammo. In addition to Harry’s hunting rifles, there was the Glock he had carried as sheriff. Dale wondered what had happened to his own weapon. He had always been a crack shot and had taken great pleasure and pride in his marksmanship skills. But this was now his first time handling a gun since, well, since before. As he ran his hands over the Glock, he didn’t feel any of the old satisfaction he had once gotten from the solid feel of a well-made weapon. Now he knew that, in a real fight, guns only took you so far. But that wasn’t to say that they didn’t have their uses. Just to see how it would feel, Dale placed the barrel of the unloaded Glock in his mouth. He closed his eyes, imagining the moment of release he could bring about with just a simple movement of his finger.</p><p>Then he stopped, hurriedly tossing the guns back in the closet and slamming the door. What was he thinking? He couldn’t shoot himself with Harry’s own gun in his own apartment. That would be the cruelest thing he could do. Harry would spend the rest of his life blaming himself for leaving those guns lying around. He would probably think Dale had used the Glock to send him some sort of message, rather than it just being the most convenient tool he had at hand.</p><p>But, Dale realized, the other options weren’t really any better. He pictured Harry coming home to find him lying in a pool of his own blood in the bathtub, or hanging by a bedsheet from the ceiling fan, or with his throat burned through by Drane-O. And the only imaginable outcome from any of those scenarios would be that Harry would be devastated and guilt-ridden. If Dale was going to go through with this, he had to find somewhere other than Harry’s home to do the deed.</p><p>So he began roaming the streets. In the mornings, before Harry left for work, he always told Harry where he was going that day, whether to the park or the library or the art museum. It made Harry happy that he was getting out, and Dale always did at least stop by his stated destination for the day so that he wouldn’t be lying to Harry. But he didn’t stop there. He kept walking, most of the day, exploring the unknown and unloved corners of the city. He walked across every bridge in Spokane until he found the highest one. Staring down at the river far below, he imagined there could even be a kind of joy in the leap. A moment of pure freedom. And if he did it at night when no one was around, and when the river flow was high, maybe he could just disappear into the water. Maybe that would be kinder, if Harry didn’t have to see him. Maybe Harry would even think he had done what he had intended to do and simply left town. But Dale couldn’t fool himself into believing that. He imagined Harry searching for him, calling police departments and hospitals, going into morgues to look at water-bloated and fish-nibbled rotting corpses to identify whether they were Dale. Maybe disappearing wasn’t kinder after all.</p><p>Dale stood at railroad crossings and watched trains roll by. That was a possibility. There wouldn’t be much left of him, and maybe Harry would even believe it was an accident. But maybe then that would be the thing that would haunt Harry, not knowing whether it had been an accident or not. The more possibilities Dale explored, the more he realized there was no way to go through with it without causing Harry pain.</p><p>Strangely, although he was now at the lowest low point he had ever sunk to, he only felt that way when he was alone. When he was with Harry, he felt at peace. Always in the back of his mind was the thought, <em>Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow</em>. So, subconsciously, he lived every day with Harry as if it would be his last. He didn’t want to show any sign of his inner turmoil, because any small giveaway could become the thing  that Harry would obsess over once he was gone, the thing that Harry would use to beat himself up about how he should have seen it coming. Dale himself didn’t know if he would go through with it, but in case he did, he wanted his last day with Harry, whenever that might be, to be as happy as his days were capable of being nowadays. And so he listened to Harry’s stories about funny things that had happened at work, let Harry bring him coffee and pie, and let their shoulders touch when they sat on the couch in the evening watching TV. In that way, he said goodbye to Harry a thousand different times, in a thousand different ways, without Harry ever realizing it.</p><p>One morning, after Harry went to work, Dale set out on his customary rounds of the city. He walked across the bridge, contemplating the drop down to the river. Then he walked along the railroad tracks, listening to the lonely whistle of a faraway train, getting closer all the time. The sound of death’s approach was the sweetest music he had ever heard. To listen, and know that he had the power to stand aside or let it come, gave him the same freedom he felt when he stared down at the welcoming waters of the river, or when he had watched Laura Palmer beckon to him in his dream. There was a way out after all, and it was up to him to choose to take it or not.</p><p>Continuing his walk along the tracks, Dale’s attention was drawn to an alley between two derelict warehouses. This was the industrial part of the city, and it was rather run-down, with several manufacturers having closed their facilities in the past few years.  This particular alley was filled with people who themselves appeared to be rather run-down. Junkies. Dale saw a disreputable-looking man, with a scraggly beard and a tattoo of a coiled rattlesnake on the back of his shaved head, surreptitiously accept cash from a skeletally thin woman with hollow eyes. The woman took a small plastic bag from the man and hurried away down the alley.</p><p>Dale was reminded, suddenly and powerfully, of the one time he had used heroine. He had been undercover, dung his first year in the FBI. He had been assigned to investigate a criminal gang in Philadelphia by collecting evidence that they were selling drugs to a local judge and using the blackmail opportunity to secure light sentencing for gang members. Dale’s cover had been as a low-level drug dealer who wanted to start selling for the gang. The only reason his superiors had sent in someone as green as Dale had been was that he was fresh out of Quantico and therefore not known to the criminal element of Philadelphia. He had managed to get a meeting with one of the mid-level gang members, who had taken one look at him, called him a Boy Scout, and told him to get lost. The man didn’t believe for one second that Dale was involved in the drug business in any capacity. Desperate to prove himself in his young career by getting a break in the case, Dale had taken some of the product he had been trying to offload, expertly loaded a syringe, and shot himself up in front of the disbelieving gang members. He had been so out of it for the next few hours that he couldn’t remember what had happened next, but the stunt had worked. The gang believed that he was a hardened drug user and dealer, and he had used his in to get the evidence needed to bust the leaders and the corrupt judge in less than a week. That had been his first big case, winning him many accolades from his superiors and setting him up for his subsequent career success.</p><p>Dale hadn’t thought about the incident in years, but now he remembered the feeling of the heroine shooting through his veins. It had felt like he imagined that moment of flight would feel like if he flung himself off the river bridge. Maybe this was another means of escape. It could even lead to a more permanent escape, because he didn’t really have a good sense of appropriate dosages. He had been lucky that he hadn’t accidentally overdosed on that case all those years ago, but of course he had thought he was invincible back then. Now he knew better. Maybe this would be a way to end things that really would be an accident, so he wouldn’t be hurting Harry intentionally.</p><p>He walked into the alley, trying to look like he belonged there. The attempt was not successful. Even though he hardly resembled a Boy Scout now, with the aura of rough living conjured by his facial scars, something in his general demeanor immediately aroused suspicion in the bearded, tattoo-headed drug dealer.</p><p>“You a cop?” the man asked him immediately. “You have to tell me if you are.”</p><p>“No, I’m not a cop,” Dale replied. “Just for your own information, by the way, the notion that police officers have to disclose their identity while working undercover is a common misconception. If that were the case, no sting operation would ever succeed. So for your future business transactions, it may be prudent for you to develop an alternative means of ascertaining whether or not your potential customers are law enforcement officers.”</p><p>“Whatever,” the man said impatiently, his eyes having glazed over midway through Dale’s helpful advice. “You looking to buy or what?”</p><p>Now that the offer was so blatantly on the table, Dale was suddenly unsure. He glanced around, where a couple of junkies were lounging around with vacant expressions, apparently having shot up right there in the alley. Dale was now picturing Harry finding him in a place like this, with that kind of look on his face, and he knew that he had been kidding himself about this being a serious option. Taking this kind of escape route would be hurting Harry intentionally, regardless of whether it ended up being fatal or not.</p><p>Prevaricating, Dale said to the man, “Just browsing, thank you.”</p><p>“Browsing?” the man repeated in disbelief. “This block is for serious buyers only. You want to browse, go to the mall.”</p><p>The mall. Suddenly, standing here in this filthy stinking alley, with the long-approaching train now lumbering across the nearby railroad bridge above the river, Dale felt that the mall was indeed where he wanted to be. He wanted to get away from the illusions of relief offered by needles and crushing wheels and water. He wanted to see Harry, because only that offered him true relief from the suffering he was creating for himself.</p><p>“Very well,” Dale told the drug dealer. “Thank you for your time.”</p><p>As he walked away, he heard the man mutter again, “<em>Browsing</em>.”</p><p>As Dale walked back toward downtown, he reflected on a new course of action. He couldn’t keep spending his days window-shopping for suicides. He knew, deep down, that he didn’t really want to die. If he did, he wouldn’t be so concerned with what happened to Harry after he was gone. Harry was his tether to the world. Even if he didn’t want to live for himself anymore, he did want to live for Harry. It was the least he could do, after all Harry had done for him.</p><p>Quite simply, he needed something to <em>do</em>. He had never had this much free time on his hands, and it didn’t suit him. He had always been so disciplined and had lived in such a structured way that the unmarked passage of time that his life had become was completely overwhelming. No wonder he had become fixated on potential ways of killing himself that he didn’t really intend to follow through on. It was the first forward-thinking planning he had done since before.</p><p>This was actually something he had discussed with his therapist recently. Not the suicidal thoughts, but the lack of focus in his life. The therapist, a solemn young man who looked like he should still be in college, had suggested that he take up a hobby. Dale had just stared at him incredulously. The therapist had pressed the issue, saying that it was important to spend one’s time doing something from which one derived satisfaction. Dale had replied that he had only ever derived satisfaction from work, or from meditation, and both of those activities were closed off to him now. The therapist had gamely insisted that now was the perfect time to try something new. Maybe something that involved introspection and self-reflection. He had suggested writing. Thinking of the ashes of the letters he had tried to write to Harry, Dale had said that he had already tried writing and failed at it. Maybe something visual then, the therapist had said. Painting, or photography.</p><p>Now, Dale stopped and surveyed the scene before him. Sunlight filtered through a curtain of clouds, and the railroad tracks stretched away into the garbage-strewn weeds, and oil-slicked puddles glinted with last night’s rain. It wasn’t beautiful, exactly, but it was the world, and he was there to witness it. The thought flashed into his mind of the old camera stashed in the closet with Harry’s guns. Maybe that was another tool worth trying.</p><p>Dale arrived at the mall right at the start of Harry’s usual lunch break, so he headed to the food court. He was slightly surprised when Katie, the girl who worked at the coffee cart, squealed upon seeing him. He hadn’t been in the mall in months, so he was surprised she even remembered him. He spent a few minutes chatting with her, politely inquiring into how her studies were going, until she said over his shoulder, “Harry, you didn’t tell me Dan was coming in today.”</p><p>Dale turned to see Harry, who positively beamed as he said, “I didn’t know.”</p><p>Dale said something about just being in the neighborhood and deciding to stop by for lunch. Harry was so delighted at his presence that Dale felt guilty about the darkness of his own thoughts. As they ate, Dale brought up the camera to Harry, asking if he could borrow it. Harry didn’t ask what he wanted it for, but readily agreed and even bought Dale some film from the mall’s camera store before the end of his lunch break.</p><p>On the way home, Dale stopped at the library to check out a book on photography techniques. As a teenager, he had had a cheap camera and had gone through a brief phase in which he had taken photography fairly seriously. But that interest had disappeared when he had joined the FBI and devoted himself fully to his career. Although he knew the basics of photography, he hadn’t given it any serious thought in years, so he knew his skills were a bit rusty. If he was going to use this new hobby as something to occupy his mind and keep unhealthy thoughts at bay, he knew he needed to fully immerse himself in it, in the way he used to immerse himself in cases. That was the only hope he had of distracting himself from his morbid thoughts.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the following weeks, Dale continued to spend his days roaming the streets of Spokane. But now, instead of looking for ways to die, he was looking for ways to see. To find a scene that no one else had seen before. The task absorbed him in a way he hadn’t expected. He had spent five years having no control over what he saw, so it was liberating to put a frame around the world, to compose a shot, to focus. He had thought he would never be able to meditate again, because his mind was too crowded with unruly thoughts. But photography, he found, was just like meditation. It promoted mindfulness, making him fully aware of where he was, forcing him to pay attention to how one moment flowed seamlessly into the next.</p>
<p>Dale waited until he had used up all the rolls of film Harry had bought him before developing any of them. The actual photos were an afterthought, as far as he was concerned. It was the process of making them that was important to him. But when he had used the last roll, he dropped all the canisters off at the drugstore to get them developed. That evening, he sat at the table, flipping through the hundreds of photos. Most of them were rather uninspired, but there were a few that he thought were at least somewhat interesting. He put those ones into a separate pile for closer examination later.</p>
<p>Harry came home from work while Dale was still sorting through the photos. Harry expressed interest in looking at the photos, so Dale directed him to the pile that was potentially worth keeping. Dale kept sorting, but he couldn’t help but watch out of the corner of his eye as Harry leafed through the photos. Because Dale had put so much of himself into the photos, he felt that they revealed his soul, or what was left of it. Of course, there was no one he trusted with his soul more than Harry. Sure enough, as Harry looked at the photos, his face took on that awed expression that he usually reserved for when he looked at Dale himself. Dale was a bit self-conscious, but also pleased, at the praise Harry heaped on the photos.</p>
<p>When Harry started talking about going away for the weekend so Dale could photograph the fall foliage, with enticements of larches and apple pie, Dale’s initial inclination was to decline. But before the refusal had passed his lips, he stopped and reconsidered. What reason did he actually have for saying no? Why was he so determined to be miserable all the time? So he agreed to go on the trip, and Harry’s delighted reaction was reward enough.</p>
<p>Dale had been prepared to suffer through the trip for Harry’s sake, but he found himself actually enjoying it. They were mostly quiet on the drive, Harry apparently intent on giving him his space. But then Dale himself started breaking the silence to ask questions about the landmarks they drove past. Harry answered all his questions ably but didn’t try to press him to keep talking. In the Wenatchee Valley, they stopped at a roadside café for lunch and, as promised, warm apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Afterwards, Dale wandered around the orchard behind the café with his camera, taking photos of rusted farm implements and fallen fruit while Harry waited patiently on a bench.</p>
<p>They made it to Leavenworth just as the sun dipped behind the Cascade crest. They spent the night in a rather kitschy hotel with a Bavarian theme, indistinguishable from the town’s numerous other kitschy Bavarian-themed hotels. The wood paneling inside reminded Dale uncomfortably of the Great Northern, and he could tell that Harry had the same thought. But not even that was enough to summon the darkness, which had apparently retreated to some hidden corner of his mind.</p>
<p>They got up before sunrise so that Dale could capture the golden hour. And golden it was, with the gilded larches studding the dark green fir-lined slopes. They drove up and down rough forest roads and walked out to dramatic overhanging ledges. They got lost at least a dozen times and nearly got stuck once, on a narrow road that clung between a vertical cliff wall and a steep drop-off to nowhere. When the road petered out into a recent rockslide deposit, there was nowhere to turn around. Harry had to back up for nearly half a mile on the knife-edge road until he found a spot wide enough to turn around, which he did expertly and with a grin on his face the whole time as if this was the most fun he had had in years. It probably was. And, Dale realized with a start, he was having fun too. He had almost forgotten what that felt like.</p>
<p>Dale shot a whole roll of film that morning before the sun climbed high enough to cast harsh shadows, and then he and Harry headed back towards Spokane. They stopped in Wenatchee again and bought a whole apple pie to take home. As they entered Spokane’s city limits, Dale reflected that the trip had done him some good. If nothing else, it had been refreshing to be somewhere new, somewhere that wasn’t Twin Peaks or Medical Lake or Spokane. Somewhere that he and Harry could explore together, a place they now had memories of, memories that weren’t tainted with all the pain that infused the rest of their common geography.</p>
<p>Harry had apparently come to the same conclusion that Dale had, that photography expeditions were beneficial. So now he made it his life’s mission to take Dale to every photogenic landscape that the Inland Northwest had to offer, of which there were many. They went somewhere new on every one of Harry’s days off. Driving all those backroads through the forests and mountains and plains, Dale was reminded him of why he had been attracted to this part of the country in the first place. There was plenty of elbow room, and the landscape had the raw and unfinished feel of a work in progress. Even the mountains were young. From the time he first set foot in that corner of Washington State all those years ago, Dale had seen it as a place where anything was possible, and it had very much turned out to be that.</p>
<p>As Dale wandered the lovely lonesome landscapes with his camera, Harry was always nearby. Not always right at his side, but within sight and earshot. At first, Dale thought that was because Harry was worried that Dale would fall off a cliff or get lost or disappear into some malignant alternate dimension, but he soon realized it wasn’t that. Not only that, anyway. Harry liked watching hm work. Multiple times, Dale glanced away from his camera to glimpse Harry watching him with a soft smile. He supposed that Harry must be glad to see him doing something, anything, again. But there was more to it than that, too. When Dale developed his photos, he and Harry always went through them together, and he was struck by how Harry always seemed to understand what he had been trying to capture. It was like Harry could see though his eyes, and that made Dale even more motivated to find scenes that were worth seeing. It made him want to find beauty, just so he could show it to Harry. For that reason, Dale felt that his photos weren’t really his so much as they were a collaboration between him and Harry.</p>
<p>One day, while photographing the wheat fields of the rolling Palouse Hills, Dale looked up from changing his roll of film to see that Harry had wandered off. Harry often explored the immediate vicinity while Dale was fiddling with his equipment. Probably because he got bored, but he never showed any sign of it, instead behaving as though there was no way he would rather spend his days off than hanging out in the middle of nowhere while Dale experimented with his camera settings. Now, as Dale saw Harry a short distance away, a shot composed itself in his mind, in the way that scenes sometime leapt out at him as if they already had frames around them. Harry’s back was turned to him as he gazed out at the vast landscape, and his silhouette made for a compelling focal point, just off-center of the nearest wheat-covered hill. Normally, Dale avoided taking photos with people in them. But this particular landscape was so immense that it needed a human for scale. More than that, there was something in the way Harry was standing that made Dale want to capture the moment. Harry looked, quite simply, heroic. It was strangely moving to see a shot in which Harry looked exactly the way Dale always thought of him, strong and steadfast.</p>
<p>Harry didn’t notice that he had become the subject of one of Dale’s photos. When Dale got that roll of film developed, he was pleased to see that his portrait of Harry had come out just as he had imagined it. He put that one aside, feeling that he wasn’t quite ready to show it to Harry yet.</p>
<p>Over the course of several weeks, thoughts of death gradually faded from Dale’s mind. Even the time he spent alone, when Harry was at work, was filled with activity now, reviewing the photos from their previous outing and planning the next one. Now Dale felt that he had a future, even if it only extended as far as the next time he set out with Harry, camera in hand.</p>
<p>Dale even began to wonder if it might be worthwhile to get the facial-reconstruction surgery Dr. Sherman had recommended all those months ago. He still received frequent stares and occasional rude comments from passerby. Although those encounters didn’t bother him, he knew they bothered Harry. Even more fundamentally, Dale realized that, in the state it was in, his face was a cruel reminder to Harry of the years of suffering they had both endured. Sometimes Dale himself would almost forget about his scars until he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. Harry never had that luxury of almost forgetting. Every time he looked at Dale, he saw the evidence of what Dale had done to himself in his crazed desperation. Even though Harry looked at him with exactly the same affectionate expression that he always had, he had to experience some pain in seeing Dale’s ravaged face. Maybe it was time Dale stopped thinking about his own pain and started thinking about how he could help Harry with his.</p>
<p>On Dale’s birthday, Harry brought him a cupcake and a new camera. Dale had forgotten that it was his birthday and had also forgotten that he was now six years older than he had been on the last birthday he remembered celebrating. That one had been a major milestone. Thirty years old. But now his thirties were more than half gone. He certainly didn’t feel young anymore. He felt ancient. But when Harry smiled at him and said he was still young, he could almost believe it.  </p>
<p>Dale was excited by the new camera Harry had given him. Harry had obviously been paying close attention to be able to figure out the model he wanted and had also bought seemingly every accessory the camera store had. But Dale also understood the message underlying the camera. It was that Harry valued what Dale was doing, and that he would continue to support Dale in his search for meaning. Harry was saying that he was going to keep getting up before dawn on his days off so that he could help Dale chase the light. That was the real gift.</p>
<p>As Dale examined the new equipment, he could sense Harry watching him from the couch, basking in the joy Harry always seemed to experience whenever Dale felt any positive emotion. Pausing, Dale considered that maybe now would be a good time to bring up the surgery. If, as he suspected, Harry wanted him to get the surgery, then maybe that would be a gift that he could give to Harry.</p>
<p>“Harry,” he said, “would it still be possible for me to see that surgeon for a consultation?”</p>
<p>“Sure,” Harry said, his surprise evident. “If you want, I can call and make an appointment tomorrow.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know.” Despite his having brought it up in the first, Dale was now suddenly unsure. “I find myself conflicted about the prospect. On the one hand, it would make things easier if I looked more normal.”</p>
<p>“Did someone give you a hard time again?”</p>
<p>“Not in any flagrant way.” Dale hastened to head off Harry’s incipient anger at the notion of someone mistreating him. “You know that people always stare. I don’t really mind, but at the same time I would rather not be the subject of that kind of attention, since I’ve been out in public more lately.”</p>
<p>“Makes sense,” Harry said neutrally. “So why are you conflicted about it?”</p>
<p>That was harder to explain. He didn’t want to tell Harry that his own face gave him nightmares, that his hallucination of it had led to his most recent self-destructive psychotic episode, and that that had triggered a series of events culminating in his seriously considering suicide. So instead of answering the question, he asked one. “If I get the surgery, do you think I would look the way I used to?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. I guess the surgeon would be able to tell us that.” Harry was as sensible as ever.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to look like that,” Dale insisted. He would be fine with the surgeon repairing some of the damage, but he drew the line at a full reconstruction of his old appearance. “I don’t want to ever see that face again.” He didn’t realize that he was rubbing at his facial scars until Harry came over and gently pulled his hands down.</p>
<p>“It’s your decision,” Harry said. “But that monster already took so much from you. I don’t want it to take away your own face too.” As he spoke, he lightly brushed his fingers across Dale’s forehead.</p>
<p>Dale was always overwhelmed in moments like that, when Harry laid bare the depths of his feelings. So rather than respond directly, he raised another concern that had been in the back of his mind. “And what about my insurance? Isn’t this elective surgery? That’s typically not covered by insurance plans.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Harry said again, and pointed out, “Sounds like another question for the surgeon.”</p>
<p>“What do you think I should do?”</p>
<p>“It doesn’t matter what I think. It’s up to you.”</p>
<p>“As I said, I’m conflicted. Your thoughts on the matter will be valuable in helping me decide.” Dale appreciated that Harry was trying to respect his autonomy, as Dr. Sherman had advised. But even just the prospect of having to make a decision like this was exhausting to Dale. He would rather leave it up to Harry. He could trust Harry to do whatever was best for him, much more than he could trust himself.</p>
<p>“Look, it’s just a consultation, right?” Harry finally said. “So if we go to that, we’ll have more information, and we can decide then.” Just the kind of well-reasoned decision Dale expected from Harry. So he agreed, and Harry said he’d make the appointment the next day.</p>
<p>The day of the appointment, Dale was uneasy. His sense of foreboding only grew through the hours of examinations, scans, and waiting. Dale mostly tuned out the surgeon’s explanations of how the procedure would work, because all he really cared about was what the end result would be and whether it would be covered by insurance. He didn’t get as much clarity on either point as he had hoped for. But before he could ask any additional questions, Harry broke in to ask about facial paralysis and Dale’s inability to smile. The surgeon confirmed that it was physical damage to Dale’s facial muscles and nerves that prevented him from smiling and that the surgery would have a good chance of repairing the damage. At this revelation, Harry looked dumbstruck. Dale also hadn’t realized that he had had facial paralysis, but he didn’t feel much of a reaction to the news. In a way, paralysis was a fitting metaphor for how his entire life had been, frozen in place, in suspended animation. But Harry clearly felt that this was some sort of earth-shattering revelation.</p>
<p>On the drive home, Harry kept stealing glances at him. Finally, he couldn’t contain himself anymore, and he asked Dale, “So what do you think?”</p>
<p>Dale felt his heart sink. He regretted suggesting they come in for the consultation. Things had been going so well. Dale hadn’t been happy, exactly, but he had been content. He hadn’t expected much in terms of the future being any better, but the present had been good enough. He had thought Harry had been with him on that. But not now. Now, what Dale heard in Harry’s voice and saw in his face was hope for a better future, and there was nothing Dale hated more than to disappoint Harry. “You want me to get the surgery,” Dale said. Harry didn’t say anything, so he continued. “You hate looking at me when I’m like this.”</p>
<p>Dale’s seatbelt locked up as Harry slammed on the brakes and made a sudden lurching turn into a parking lot. “What did I do to make you think that?” Harry demanded, looking guilt-ridden. “I don’t care what you look like. All I care about is that you’re here –”</p>
<p>“That’s not what I meant.” Dale hadn’t meant it to sound like Harry was at fault. Harry’s only failing was a refusal to believe what was right in front of him. <em>I’m not here. Not really. Don’t you see that?</em> But Dale tried to explain. “I mean that, when you see my scars, it reminds you of what happened, and that makes you feel unhappy. You want me to look the way I used to look because you want me to be the way I used to be.”</p>
<p>Dale could tell right away that he had hit upon it exactly. Harry looked shocked, then confused, then angry. All those times Dale had tried to get Harry angry, to push him away, he had failed completely. Now he had achieved the seemingly impossible feat of getting Harry mad at him without even trying, simply by making an observation. “Don’t tell me what I want or what I feel,” Harry said, sounding as though the fury was choking him. Yes, he was angry all right. He got out of the truck cab as if he couldn’t stand to be around Dale for another moment.</p>
<p>Dale immediately felt remorse. After all, it was true that he didn’t fully understand what Harry wanted or felt. That was the whole problem. As much as Harry projected the aura of being a simple man, and as close as the two of them had gotten over the past few months, the inner workings of Harry’s mind were still a mystery. Most notably, Dale still didn’t have an answer to the question that had been on the forefront of his mind for the past few months, the question of why Harry had given up everything for him. So if Dale was missing something there, maybe he was also missing something with regard to why Harry wanted him to get the surgery.</p>
<p>Dale got out of the truck and tentatively sat down next to Harry on the tailgate. Harry continued speaking, more calmly now, as if there had been no interruption. “I don’t need a reminder of what happened. When I look at you, all I feel is just grateful that you got out. It’s true that I don’t like that you have those scars, because I don’t like that you got hurt like that. But I don’t want you to be anyone other than who you are, because I know you’re still you. And what I do want is for you to be able to crack a damn smile now and then if you feel like it. So, yes, I want you to get the surgery.”</p>
<p>Stated that plainly, it seemed impossible for Dale to refuse. The only thing that gave him pause was Harry’s steadfast belief that Dale was still himself. But Dale had already tried to disabuse him of that notion, with no success. It seemed that Harry was going to continue to believe it despite all evidence to the contrary, so Dale supposed that there was no harm in going along with Harry’s wishes about the surgery. How could he deny Harry something that he wanted so badly, when it made little difference to Dale himself either way?</p>
<p>But there was one more practical concern he had to raise. “I can’t let them give me my old face. Even if I wanted to, it’s the face of a serial killer that’s been all over the news. Someone would be sure to notice the resemblance.”</p>
<p>Harry shrugged. “The Twin Peaks Killer is dead. No one’s looking for him.”</p>
<p><em>No one but me</em>. Aloud, Dale said, “Even so. I can’t look at that face in the mirror anymore.” He was sure Harry didn’t like hearing that. Harry probably missed seeing the face of his friend. But it had to be said.</p>
<p>“It doesn’t have to be your face,” Harry said thoughtfully. “The surgeon said they would base the reconstruction on a photo. So we give them a photo of, I don’t know, some random guy from a magazine. Then you get a completely new face that no one recognizes, you blend in better, you can smile, no downside.”</p>
<p>That actually sounded rather appealing to Dale. It would be like starting over as a new person. “I suppose that is a good solution.”</p>
<p>“So you’ll do it?”</p>
<p>“If the insurance covers the operation, yes.”</p>
<p>“This is what you want, right?” It was sweet how Harry was trying, and completely failing, to tamp down his enthusiasm so as not to unduly influence Dale’s decision. “I mean, you’re not just doing it because it’s what I want, are you?”</p>
<p>Dale felt like laughing at the question. The only reason he was even still alive was because that was what Harry wanted. If he didn’t do things just because Harry wanted them, he would stayed as a psychotic patient at Medical Lake, or he would have gotten on that Greyhound bus and disappeared, or he would have thrown himself off that bridge by now. “I don’t think there’s much of a distinction. I don’t really want anything, but you want enough for the both of us. And if this will make you happy, maybe it will make me happy too.” He did believe that. He wasn’t sure if he could ever be happy again or not, but he did know for sure that he couldn’t be happy while Harry was miserable. And his current condition made Harry miserable, so something had to change. Maybe this would be enough.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A couple of weeks later, Harry marched triumphantly into the apartment and announced that the surgery was covered. After Dale gave his blessing for Harry to schedule it, they spent the evening flipping through magazines trying to find a new face for Dale. In an odd way, Dale enjoyed the experience. He looked at all the interchangeable faces of the male models, imagining seeing any of them when he looked in the mirror, and the feeling of relief was overwhelming. He would never have to see his old face again, nor would he have to see his current scars. It would be refreshing to have a stranger’s face. Harry didn’t seem to like any of his picks, though. Eventually, Dale realized that was because Harry still wanted him to have his old face back. He gently reminded Harry that the whole point was for him to <em>not</em> resemble his old self. So Harry finally gave in and let him choose one, which he did almost at random. He really didn’t care what he would now look like, only about what he <em>wouldn’t </em>look like.</p>
<p>The day of the surgery, Harry was tense. In pre-op, Dale tried to get Harry to go home during the procedure, but Harry refused. Thinking that he might be worried about the risk of complications, Dale tried to reassure him. But Harry just brushed that off too. He just looked at Dale, with something like grief in his eyes. Dale was confused about Harry’s troubled state of mind. After all, he was the one who had wanted Dale to get the surgery. But before he could find out what was really going on, the nurse came in and said that the OR was ready. Harry took Dale’s hand and said, “I’ll see you soon.” He sounded, and looked, as though he were about to cry. Unsure how to respond to the intensity of whatever it was Harry was feeling, Dale just squeezed his hand back before he was wheeled away.</p>
<p>The next thing Dale was aware of was Harry’s hand on his arm. He was vaguely aware of Harry asking him how he felt, and of him telling Harry to go home because he looked like hell, but everything else was a fog. He felt disconnected from his own body, which was altogether not an unpleasant sensation. He wondered fuzzily if he could just stay like that.</p>
<p>The next morning, the smell of coffee woke him up. Harry was sitting by his hospital bed with two cups of coffee and a bag of donuts. He had dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept, but he smiled and greeted Dale brightly when he saw he was awake. They drank their coffee and ate their donuts, Harry eyeing the bandages on Dale’s face all the while. Harry behaved as though he planned to stay there all day, but Dale noticed what time it was and ordered Harry to go to work. Harry unenthusiastically obeyed but returned as soon as his shift was over with more coffee and a slice of cherry pie.</p>
<p>That was how Dale’s days in the hospital went. Seeing Harry in the mornings and evenings, and in between a lot of time being examined by doctors or watching TV. At night, he had trouble sleeping. As soon as he started to drift off, he would feel as though he was paralyzed, or falling, or drowning, and he would jerk awake again. He supposed that he had grown accustomed to Harry being nearby, keeping the darkness at bay. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the lack of distractions, but Dale now felt that darkness growing stronger. He couldn’t wait to be discharged, so he could at least sleep in his own bed, with Harry across the room, and so that he could go back to filling his days with photography. Maybe then, when things went back to normal – what had become normal for him – the darkness would retreat again.</p>
<p>When the doctor removed the bandages to reveal Dale’s new face, Dale kept his eyes on Harry. He had done the surgery for Harry’s benefit, after all, and he didn’t know what to do if Harry wasn’t pleased with the result. But Harry seemed genuinely satisfied, much to Dale’s relief. Almost as an afterthought, he gazed into the mirror the nurse handed him. The face that stared back at him was similar to the one he remembered, but different enough that he felt that he could live with it. So, as far as he was concerned, the operation had been a success, and now maybe he and Harry could get on with their lives.</p>
<p>After Dale was discharged, Harry suggested that he go through his photos and pick out some to get enlarged and give as gifts for Christmas, which was coming up in just a couple of weeks. Dale suspected that Harry had ulterior motives in assigning him this project. While he had been in the hospital, winter had blown into town with a blizzard followed by a plunge in temperatures that froze the snow into solid ice. Harry clearly didn’t want him out wandering the city in the winter weather. Nevertheless, Dale took up the project willingly. It kept his mind occupied, and it was comforting to look at photos he had taken months ago, when there was still greenery and sunshine, as a reminder that those things would return.</p>
<p>The photo project had also been an excuse for Harry to arrange for them to see their friends, few in number though they were. They had lunch with Katie the barista girl and coffee with Dr. Sherman, and Hawk came down to visit right before Christmas. Harry proudly presented each of them with a specially selected photo print. Each of their friends seemed delighted with how much better Dale was doing, with his new face and his new hobby. Dale didn’t feel like he was doing much better at all, but he was glad that he was at least giving that impression. Maybe that would make Harry worry about him less.</p>
<p>On Christmas Eve, Harry had to work a double shift. Dale volunteered to go hang out at the mall with him and help out if he could, and Harry accepted gladly. Dale did want to help Harry deal with the masses of holiday shoppers, but he also had a secret mission. While he had been sorting through his photos looking for gifts, he had come across the one he had taken of Harry in the Palouse Hills. Staring at it, he had remembered that feeling he had had that day in the wheat field, of how he had managed to capture Harry’s essence. How Harry’s simple presence had reduced the world to a scale that was manageable for Dale. Dale wanted, somehow, to convey that message to Harry. So, on Christmas Eve, Dale smuggled the negatives of the Palouse photos into his jacket pocket before he and Harry left for the mall. Upon arrival, Harry was immediately called upon to help mediate an altercation over a fender-bender in the parking garage, so Dale volunteered to go get them coffee. Before heading to the food court for the coffee, he dropped the film off at the photo store to have the print made. In the afternoon, he volunteered to make another coffee run, this time going to pick up the print and then hurrying home to stash it under his bed before returning to Harry with the coffee, apologizing for the delay due to long lines at the food court. Harry had been so busy managing the unruly kids waiting in line to see Santa that he hadn’t even noticed that Dale had been gone for close to half an hour.</p>
<p>The next morning, over their Christmas breakfast, Dale saw Harry smiling at him in response to nothing in particular. Harry often did that, as if he just couldn’t contain his joy at seeing Dale. Sometimes, Dale felt strangely guilty when Harry smiled at him like that. He felt that he was an imposter, because he couldn’t imagine anyone feeling that much joy about seeing the broken shell of a human being that he was. But today, all Dale felt was gratitude. It was Christmas morning, and the winter sun was shining through the ice-glazed windowpane, and he was drinking coffee and eating leftover ham and pancakes and maple syrup with Harry. All that unmarked span of time he had spent trapped and alone, he never would have dared to dream that he would ever again have an experience like the present moment.</p>
<p>Harry, no doubt unintentionally, ruined the moment by asking if Dale had been doing his facial exercises. Dale had been doing them, albeit not with any great amount of enthusiasm. He felt ridiculous, forcing his face into uncomfortable and painful positions, all so he could generate what at this point was a horrible rictus of a grin. He didn’t want Harry to see that. Once again, he felt a pang of guilt at letting Harry down. He knew that it was very important to Harry that he be able to smile again, although he didn’t fully understand why. The surgeon kept saying that the amount of progress he was making was adequate. Dale had asked, if that was the case, why his facial expressions looked so unnatural. Dr. Chandra had said it was because he was trying too hard. As long as he did his exercises so that he was physically conditioned, Dr. Chandra had said, there would come a day when Dale would smile without even realizing it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Dale had been dubious about that claim. He still felt as though real joy was something that would elude him forever. But he would keep doing the exercises, because it was important to Harry.</p>
<p>Harry made an offhand comment about wanting to be there to see Dale’s first real smile.</p>
<p>“Of course you’ll be there, Harry,” Dale said, surprised that Harry thought it could possibly be otherwise. The only time he felt close to being able to smile nowadays was when Harry smiled at him.</p>
<p>Occasionally, Harry said things like that that made Dale wonder if Harry knew how much he meant to Dale. Dale never doubted that he was the most important person in Harry’s life, because Harry never gave him an opportunity to doubt it. He showed it with his every act and word and look. Dale, on the other hand, was incapable of showing Harry that he felt the same way about him. He was just too damaged, unable to feel things as deeply as he once had, for fear that feeling anything would open up the floodgates and drown him in the despair that was always lurking just beneath the surface. But as much as he felt anything these days, he felt it for Harry. So now was a good time to give Harry the photo print, so he could express in his wholly inadequate way that Harry was the center of his world.</p>
<p>When Dale gave Harry the print, Harry stared at it in surprise, then recognition. He obviously remembered the place and the day they had been there. “This is a great photo. I didn’t see this one before. I didn’t even know you took it.”</p>
<p>“I wanted it to be a surprise.” Dale wasn’t sure if Harry was getting the significance of the photo, so he pressed on, clumsily, trying to explain. “Because this is how I see you.”</p>
<p>“You see me as a cowboy?”</p>
<p>Dale surprised himself by laughing. That was something else he hadn’t thought he was capable of anymore. “No. Well, yes, I suppose I do, in a way.” Looking at the photo again, he could see what Harry meant. It looked like it could be the poster for an old Western movie. Come to think of it, Harry was very much like the hero in a Western. Putting that aside, Dale continued to fumble his way into what he was trying to say. “But I mean that you’re my focal point. You give me perspective. And I don’t always know how to tell you that, but at least this way I can show you.”</p>
<p>Harry looked at the photo again, and this time Dale saw that he could see it. “Thanks, Coop. This means a lot to me.” <em>You mean a lot to me</em>, Dale thought, but couldn’t say it, so he just nodded and sipped his coffee. It was all right. Harry had gotten the message.</p>
<p>After Christmas, Dale felt his mood sink again. In place of the bitter cold sunshine and biting winds, the weather had shifted to a warmer pattern. That seemed as though it would be a good thing, but it wasn’t. Now it rained, nearly constantly. Not hard, just barely drizzling, but never letting up. All the snow that had accumulated melted under the deluge and ran off in dirty rivulets into the storm drains.</p>
<p>“I suppose this must be the infamous Pacific Northwest rain I’ve heard so much about,” Dale said one morning, staring out at the streetlight, which illuminated puddles rippling with incoming raindrops.</p>
<p>In response, Harry became defensive on behalf of Spokane’s climate. “This is the <em>Inland</em> Northwest. We’re in the rain shadow of the Cascades.”</p>
<p>Dale was not quite sure what a rain shadow was, but he looked skeptically at the drops streaking down the window. “I believe the Cascades have failed in their duty. This is the tenth straight day of rain.”</p>
<p>“It’s just a jet stream pattern,” Harry said stubbornly. “It’s not like we’re <em>Seattle</em>.” He said the name with no small amount of derision.</p>
<p>“Harry,” Dale said patiently. “You know I trust your authority on these matters, and I respect your experience as a local of this region. Nevertheless, I must insist that this is really an extraordinary amount of rain. More rain than I’ve ever seen in my life.”</p>
<p>“Spokane gets 17 inches of rain a year. Less than half of what they get in Philadelphia.”</p>
<p>“In Philadelphia, it doesn’t all arrive in a single month.”</p>
<p>“Just the price we pay for our beautiful summers,” Harry said, grinning. “All sunshine and no humidity.”</p>
<p>Dale could handle the rain, but it was the dark that was really getting to him. Not only that, but it was so dark. It was dark when Harry got up and left for work, and it was dark again by the time he got home. Some days, it never really got light, when the clouds were so thick with rain that there was no trace of the sun. Dale couldn’t spend much time outside, because it turned out that forty degrees in the rain was much colder than twenty degrees in the sun. And he no longer had the task of sorting through his photos to keep him occupied. So the darkness outside began to merge with his darkness inside.</p>
<p>Even worse, he continued to feel that he was disappointing Harry with his lack of real progress on the facial paralysis. Harry no longer questioned him about what the surgeon had said in his latest follow-up appointment or about how the facial exercises were going. Maybe it was because Harry didn’t want to pressure him, but maybe it was because Harry had realized that Dale wasn’t emotionally capable of smiling even if he had been physically capable. Dale had suspected that Harry had been so keen on him getting the surgery because he felt that it would fix Dale, whether Harry himself had been consciously aware of that expectation or not. Dale had known all along that he was too broken to be fixed, and he wondered if Harry was now realizing that too.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After a couple weeks of dismal weather and even more dismal thoughts, Albert called out of the blue to notify them that he was coming up from the Tri-Cities for a visit. That was a very Albert thing to do, to invite himself on the spur of the moment. Dale wanted to see Albert, who had been his closest friend at the FBI a lifetime ago. But he was also oddly nervous about it. Albert’s abrasiveness had never bothered Dale, but that had been when Dale had been a different person, a stronger person. He was sure Albert, as acerbic as he was, wouldn’t intentionally hurt him, but he was equally sure that Albert would be 100% honest with him. That was the one thing he could count on Albert for more than he could count on Harry. Harry always fooled himself into thinking that Dale was doing better than he really was, and sometimes he almost managed to convince Dale too. But Albert would be sure to take one look at him, realize what a mess he was, and then point it out to him as kindly as he could. Tough love had always been Albert’s way. And Dale was not quite sure he was ready for that yet. So he cajoled Harry into coming along to dinner with Albert. He knew that was a supreme sacrifice on Harry’s part, probably the most self-sacrificing thing on the long list of things Harry had done for him. But at least, this way, Harry and Albert would most likely spend the entire evening sniping at each other, and that would take some of the heat off Dale.</p>
<p>It didn’t quite work out that way. Much to Dale’s surprise, Harry and Albert were quite civil to each other all evening. Before, Albert had always been the instigator in their confrontations, but Harry had unfailingly risen to the bait, and that had just encouraged Albert to antagonize Harry even more. But now, the vicious circle was broken, because Albert was as polite as Dale had ever seen him. In turn, after some initial suspicion, Harry seemed to relax and even to enjoy himself. Maybe Albert had softened a bit over the years. Or, more likely, he was just on his best behavior for Dale’s benefit. Either way, Dale appreciated it. And it was good to see Albert again. Even if he was acting uncharacteristically considerate on this particular evening, he still had that quick wit and dry humor that had always made him such fun to be around. And Dale appreciated that he treated him exactly the same as he always had. It was the most normal he had felt in as long as he could remember.</p>
<p>The next day, while Harry was at work, Dale and Albert wandered around Spokane. The rains had finally ceased, and it was bright clear and cold. They walked over to the falls, which were roaring from all the rain and melted snow, the river brown with mud. They strolled through the park, skirting the largest puddles that flooded the walkways.</p>
<p>“So now that you don’t have to put on a brave face for Harry,” Albert said, “how are you really doing?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Dale said automatically, then paused. He could be honest with Albert. Not completely honest, of course. He didn’t want to tell anyone, not even Albert, about his hallucinations, or visions, or whatever they were. Partly because he didn’t want to utter the name of the Black Lodge aloud, and partly because it would put Albert in a difficult position as to whether he should take action. And he definitely didn’t want to talk about the nearly suicidal spiral he had been in and, possibly, tentatively, emerged from. But he could talk about those things obliquely with Albert, whereas with Harry he didn’t dare raise them at all. “Not well,” Dale corrected himself. “I feel like there’s a darkness inside me, and it’s swallowed me. And now there’s nothing left of me.”</p>
<p>Albert was quiet. “That doesn’t sound healthy,” he finally said.</p>
<p>“No, I suppose not.”</p>
<p>“Anything I can do?”</p>
<p>“No. But thank you.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I didn’t think so. Just felt like I should offer.” Albert, seeming a bit distracted, stepped right into a puddle with his expensive shoes. Grimacing, he pulled his foot out and continued walking, his shoe making a rather amusing squelching sound. “Does Harry know you feel that way?”</p>
<p>“I sincerely hope not.”</p>
<p>“He’s not an idiot.” Apparently just realizing what he had said, Albert added quickly, “I mean, not a complete idiot. He must know that something’s wrong.”</p>
<p>“Of course he does. But I have to confess to going to some lengths to conceal the depths of my unhappiness from Harry.”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“Harry gave up everything for me. I don’t understand why, but all he wants in return is for me to be myself again. I don’t want to fail him.”</p>
<p>“Are you two fucking?”</p>
<p>Dale was accustomed enough to Albert’s bluntness that he didn’t even break his stride at the question. “Albert, that’s hardly any of your business.”</p>
<p>“It is, because you’re in no condition to consent. So if you were, that would mean Harry was taking advantage of you. But I don’t think he would do that, so that’s not what’s happening, is it?”</p>
<p>“No, it’s not.” Dale didn’t think he himself would ever be capable of physical intimacy again. Just another of the many things he had lost. It didn’t really matter to him, because he felt closer to Harry than he ever had to any lover. But Albert’s question, rudely phrased though it was, did stir some more guilt in Dale. Of course, Harry wasn’t getting any physical intimacy or romantic love now, and he wouldn’t as long as his life continued to be fully consumed by Dale’s well-being. It was just another of the many things Harry had given up for Dale.</p>
<p>“Well, then, the only possible explanation I can think of is that the dumb bastard just plain cares about you. Much as I would like to blame him for everything, I can’t fault him for that.”</p>
<p>“I feel like a ghost.” Dale stopped now, looking across the river at Spokane’s skyline. “I feel like I’m just a shadow, or an echo, of who I used to be. And Harry doesn’t see it. He doesn’t want to. He’s willingly letting himself be haunted by me.”</p>
<p>“He’s never going to let you go,” Albert said. They were standing by a park bench, and Albert looked like was about to sit down, but then reconsidered it upon noticing how damp it was. So he just shifted instead, and his shoe squelched again. “You have to be the one to leave.”</p>
<p>“Leave? Why would I leave?”</p>
<p>Albert looked dumbfounded. “Look, Coop, Harry means well, but your relationship is beyond fucked up. You need to move on with your life, and you can’t do that while you’re more concerned about what Harry wants than with what you want.”</p>
<p>“I don’t want anything.” That wasn’t quite true. He wanted to be himself again, and to make Harry happy, but that seemed so impossible that it wasn’t worth wanting. And there were plenty of things he didn’t want. He didn’t want to hurt Harry. He didn’t want to leave Harry.</p>
<p>“Come on, Coop, that is bullshit. Listen, you are the only person I’ve ever met who might, possibly, be smarter than me. And you have something I most certainly do not, which is that people like you. Do you know how rare that is, to be a genius <em>and</em> likeable? You could be running the damn world. You could do anything.”</p>
<p>Dale shook his head. “That’s not who I am. Certainly not now.”</p>
<p>“I’m not saying you’re exactly the same as you were. Harry can delude himself into thinking that, but of course you’re not. You’re a bit screwed up, sure, but anyone would be after what you went through. That doesn’t mean you can’t still be happy and accomplish great things and make a difference in people’s lives or whatever other ridiculous pursuit you want to devote your life to. Your problem is that you don’t know who you are now. That’s something you have to figure out, and you can only do that on your own. And by the way, since it’s all you seem to care about, this would be better for Harry too.”</p>
<p>“You think I don’t know that?” Dale snapped. That hit a little too close to home.</p>
<p>Albert seemed a bit taken aback. “All I’m saying is that Harry also needs to move on with his life—”</p>
<p>“I almost left once.” Dale hadn’t intended to tell Albert any of this, but it just spilled out. “I bought a bus ticket. I waited in the station until the bus arrived. I almost got on it.”</p>
<p>“Damn, Coop. I didn’t mean leave like that. If you just disappeared, Harry would tear the world apart looking for you.”</p>
<p>“I know. That’s why I stayed. Among other reasons.” He remembered the longing he had felt to see Harry’s face, to hear his voice, while he had been sitting in that bus station.</p>
<p>“So don’t do that. I’m talking about an orderly process here. Get a job, then get your own apartment. You don’t have to move to Timbuktu, for god’s sake. You can stay here in this charming windswept outpost, if you want. Ease into it.”</p>
<p>Dale paused for a long time. “I’ll think about it,” he finally said. And he would now, whether he wanted to or not, because Albert had planted the seed. All this time, Dale had assumed that, if he ever finally mustered the strength to leave and let Harry get on with his life, he would have to do it as a single clean move, to get the pain over with as quickly as possible. He hadn’t considered the possibility of a more gradual withdrawal, with the potential to spare some of the pain for them both.</p>
<p>Dale and Albert went out for lunch and then to the art museum in the afternoon. Albert grudgingly admitted that it was a decent collection for a small-town museum. Late in the day, they ended up in the coffee shop across the street from Dale and Harry’s apartment. Albert had some paperwork to do, wrapping up his report for the case he had just finished in the Tri-Cities. He spread out the contents of a manila folder across the table. Dale remembered that feeling of solving a case. He had never been able to find another adrenaline rush that matched it. He had been unusual among his FBI colleagues in that he had never minded doing reports. The process of putting together the chain of reasoning and evidence had appealed to his methodical nature. Albert, on the other hand, was grumbling about needing the file the report first thing on Monday when he was back in the office. He told Dale that he needed to grab one more file that he had forgotten in his car, so Dale nodded and volunteered to save their table.</p>
<p>Albert was gone for rather longer than it seemed it would take to retrieve a file from his car, which was parked right at the end of the block. Glancing out the window, Dale saw Albert coming down the stairs that led to Harry and Dale’s apartment. Of course. Harry was home from work by now, and Albert had gone in to talk to him. About Dale, no doubt. Dale fumed silently. At least Albert didn’t appear to be bleeding, so it seemed that he and Harry had avoided coming to blows.</p>
<p>Albert returned to the coffee shop and slid back into his seat across from Dale. “Sorry that took so long,” he said, evading Dale’s questioning look. “Had to make a quick call from the payphone on the corner.”</p>
<p>“Albert,” Dale said. “I know you went to see Harry.”</p>
<p>“Oh.”</p>
<p>“What did you say to him?”</p>
<p>“Nothing I haven’t already said to him.”</p>
<p>“Could you be more specific, please?”</p>
<p>Albert sighed. “Look, you know how it is with me and Harry. He says something stupid, I tell him it’s stupid, he threatens me with physical violence, and so on. It’s nothing you need to worry about. Believe me, he doesn’t listen to anything I say anyway.”</p>
<p>Dale looked across the street at the apartment again. “I’m going to go make sure he’s all right.” He started to get up.</p>
<p>“Just leave him alone for a while, okay?” Albert said irritably. “Maybe he needs a break from you sometimes.”</p>
<p>Dale dropped back into his seat, feeling miserable. Albert looked remorseful.</p>
<p>“Not from <em>you</em>, I mean,” Albert said. “From the whole, you know, situation. He’s had a rough time of it too.”</p>
<p>“I know that.”</p>
<p>“You don’t know the full extent of it. You weren’t there.” Albert shook his head. “Harry went absolutely berserk when you were, you know. We all tried to tell him that there was nothing any of us could do. At one point, I tried to suggest that the best way of honoring your memory and everything that you stood for was to take out the monster you had turned into. Harry disagreed, to put it mildly. I thought he was going to kill me. That was the last time I saw him, because that was right before things got really bad and he took off for Idaho or wherever it was he went.”</p>
<p>“Montana,” Dale corrected.</p>
<p>“Like I said, wherever.” Albert shrugged. “Anyway, I know you want to help him, but this is something he’s going to have to work through on his own. Just like you have to work through all your crap on your own.”</p>
<p>Dale couldn’t bring himself to agree with that, but he also didn’t have the energy to argue it. So he sat and drank his coffee while Albert finished his report, staring out the window at the light in the apartment window all the time. Afterwards, Albert asked him to go to dinner back at the hotel. Even though Dale wasn’t hungry at all, he agreed, knowing there was nothing else to do but go back to the apartment. And he didn’t want to go back yet, in case Albert was right about Harry needing a break from him.</p>
<p>Albert dropped Dale off in front of the apartment after dinner, and Dale headed upstairs. Just a single table lamp was on, and Harry was lying in bed. Dale knew right away that there was no way Harry was asleep this early. “Harry?” he said. Harry didn’t respond, and Dale sat on the edge of the bed. Reaching out to touch Harry’s shoulder, he asked, “Are you all right?”</p>
<p>Harry turned to face him, and Dale flinched at the haunted look on Harry’s face. “Oh, Harry. What did Albert say to you?” He regretted not coming back to the apartment right away to try to undo whatever Albert had done. Whatever obnoxious thing Albert had said, it had clearly worked its way deep into Harry’s mind, and he had been stewing about it all this time.</p>
<p>Instead of answering, Harry just said, “You know you can tell me anything, right? I mean, I want you to be happy, but I’m not mad or disappointed or anything that you’re not.”</p>
<p>So Albert had told Harry what Dale had said, or at least some of it. Of course, hearing Dale’s own words had to be more painful to Harry than any insults Albert had lobbed alongside them. “I want to be happy,” Dale said, trying to be fully honest with Harry for once. “I just think I’ve forgotten how.”</p>
<p>Harry laid his hand on top of Dale’s. “You’ll remember. Just give it time.”</p>
<p>“I will.” That was all Dale could promise, that he’d keep trying. “I must say, I’m rather annoyed at Albert. What I told him was in confidence. It’s not that I don’t feel I can talk to you, Harry. It’s just that I know it hurts you to hear these things.” He wanted to reassure Harry that he hadn’t used Albert as his confidant because he was closer to him than to Harry. It was that he and Harry were too close. “And I shouldn’t have allowed Albert to go speak to you alone. When we were at the coffee shop, he told me he was just stepping out to get some files from his car –”</p>
<p>“It’s okay,” Harry said, waving off his apology. Then he asked, in a heavy voice, “Do you really feel like a ghost?”</p>
<p>“Sometimes.” Dale wished he could convey how much Harry kept him grounded. “But then there are times when I almost remember how I used to feel. When I feel as if I’m real again.”</p>
<p>“You are real.” Harry said it quietly, but with complete conviction. Dale kept his hand on Harry’s shoulder, sensing that Harry needed to feel grounded as much as he did right now. Soon after, Harry fell asleep, but Dale stayed where he was for a long time. It was one of those moments when he felt real, with all the bittersweet sensations that entailed, and he wanted to experience it for as long as he could.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next day, they had an awkward breakfast with Albert at the coffee shop, seeing him off before he left for the airport. Dale wished that they had been able to end the visit on a better note. He appreciated Albert’s support, harsh though it had been in tone. The past couple days had been like an extended counseling session with the world’s crankiest therapist. If nothing else, it had shaken him out of the malaise he had been experiencing in the weeks prior. He didn’t know how long his shift in mood would last, but it was comforting to be reminded that there was someone in the world besides Harry and Hawk who cared about what happened to him.</p>
<p>As it turned out, his uplifted mood lasted exactly one day. The day after Albert left, Dale returned from a walk through the park, where the puddles had turned to ice as the weather had taken another cold turn. It wasn’t even four in the afternoon yet, but the sun was already setting behind some of the taller downtown buildings. Before going upstairs, Dale retrieved their mail from the box by the door. Harry often forgot to grab it on his way home from work, so Dale always tried to remember to check it so he could save Harry the trouble of having to go back downstairs later. When he entered the apartment, Dale tossed the mail on the table. He usually ignored the contents of their mail, because all they ever got was junk mail and bills. Harry took care of all the details of their lives so that Dale didn’t have to think about anything practical. Of course, Dale felt guilty about leaving all those tedious tasks to Harry, but Harry wouldn’t have it any other way. It was probably for the best, because the thought of having to balance a checkbook or order utility service was overwhelming to Dale. All those everyday tasks of the mundane world now seemed to him like the arcane customs of some foreign civilization.</p>
<p>But now, as he tossed the mail on the table, the topmost envelope caught his eye. It was from the office of Dr. Chandra, the surgeon that had performed his facial reconstruction. The envelope had the officious appearance of a bill, with a clear plastic window revealing their address. Eyeing it suspiciously, Dale opened it. It was indeed a bill. A rather large bill. Dale’s jaw dropped at the size of the payment due by the end of the month. Then his eye scanned further down the page to see the full balance, and he boggled further. This must be a mistake. Harry had said that the surgery was covered by Dale’s insurance. Except – Dale tried to remember exactly what Harry had said. He had been rather vague about it, saying only that it was covered. As if he were trying to avoid actually lying to Dale, while leaving out pertinent information. Dale had accepted what Harry had said at face value. But now, as he stared at that gargantuan dollar amount at the bottom of the paper slip, he realized, with sudden clarity, what had transpired.</p>
<p>The claim had been denied. Harry would have fought that decision tooth and nail, but he had eventually acquiesced and worked out a payment plan with the surgeon’s office. And he had kept all this from Dale, because he had known that there was no way Dale would have gone through with the surgery if he had known that Harry was paying for it out of his own pocket.</p>
<p>Dale looked again at the dollar amount, doing some quick mental calculations. Harry would be making payments for many years, probably until he was retirement-age. Maybe he would even have to delay retirement because of it. Dale felt sick. All along, in the back of his mind, he had held out the vague hope that Harry would someday return to where he belonged. He would go back to Twin Peaks, and become sheriff again, and maybe resume the life he had been leading before he had ever had the misfortune of meeting Special Agent Dale Cooper. But this was the clearest evidence yet that Harry had shackled himself to Dale and thrown away the key. It wasn’t just his past life he had given up for Dale. He had given up his future too. And for what? So that he could see Dale smile again. And Dale was so shattered and hopeless that he couldn’t even give Harry that.</p>
<p>In a sort of daze, Dale made a pot of coffee, more out of habit than because he wanted any. He needed to think. The seed of an idea that Albert had planted in his mind was now taking root. He could get a job. Doing what, he had no idea. The only job he had ever had was as an FBI agent, and now that was impossible. Besides, he was such a wreck that it would be difficult to get up and go to work and make it through the day, every day. But he could do it. At least he looked almost normal now, so he could pretend to be normal long enough to put in a day’s work. Then he could support himself and get his own place, and maybe even eventually pay Harry back for the surgery. He had let his own weakness be an excuse for too long, letting himself need Harry so much. It was like Albert had said. Dale had to find out who he was now, and he had to let Harry have his own life.</p>
<p>Dale was sitting at the table with his cup of coffee when Harry came home. Clearly, Harry knew right away that something was wrong. Dale could feel him trying to puzzle out what it was. Harry tried to cheer him up by talking about how they could now afford to rent a house since he had gotten a raise. Dale wasn’t sure exactly how much Harry had made before and how much he was making now, but he was willing to bet that the raise didn’t cover even half of the monthly payments for the surgery. Still, he kept still and silent while Harry continued talking about gardens and darkrooms with an increasingly desperate undertone to his voice.</p>
<p>Finally, Dale realized he had to say <em>something</em>. “May I please see the classified ads when you’re done with them?” He was surprised at the coldness of his own voice.</p>
<p>“Sure.” Harry eagerly handed him the paper. “I already circled a few that are in our price range –”</p>
<p>“I want to see the job listings.”</p>
<p>“Why?” There were volumes of bewilderment packed into that one syllable.</p>
<p>“I think it’s time I started working again. That way, I can save up and rent my own apartment.” Dale didn’t know why he was being so cruel about it. It was as if, subconsciously, he was trying to hurt Harry as much as possible so that Harry would want him to leave.</p>
<p>“Coop, you’re sick. You can’t work, and you can’t live on your own. At least, not yet.” Despite how much Dale had obviously just hurt him with his words, Harry still didn’t want him to leave.</p>
<p>Dale could see Harry mentally replaying the past few days and weeks, trying to figure out what he had done wrong to drive Dale away. He couldn’t stand to see Harry blaming himself, so he just said, “I can’t keep depending on you forever.”</p>
<p>“Yes, you can. And anyway, it doesn’t have to be forever. Just until you’re better.” Of course, Harry was still clinging to that belief that he would someday, somehow, get better. With sudden suspicion, Harry demanded, “Did Albert say something to you?”</p>
<p>“This has nothing to do with Albert,” Dale said evasively. He didn’t want Harry to turn Albert into the all-too-familiar target of his rage. He wanted, just once, for Harry to turn it on Dale himself. After all, Dale was the one who had ruined Harry’s life.</p>
<p>“Then where is this coming from?”</p>
<p>Dale supposed he might as well lay all his cards on the table. He got up and retrieved the surgery bill, throwing it down in front of Harry. “This came in the mail today.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” Harry said, his brow furrowed in confusion. He obviously didn’t understand why Dale was so upset.</p>
<p>And at that, Dale felt anger build up like a gathering thunderstorm. It was as if he was feeling all the anger that Harry refused to direct at him. All the anger that Dale deserved for getting himself into that disastrous situation years ago, leaving a trail of death and shattered lives in his wake. But he also felt anger at Harry, for <em>not </em>being angry at him. For never giving up on him. For caring about him so damn much.</p>
<p>“You told me the surgery was covered,” Dale said, his voice shaking with his misplaced fury. “The one thing I still believed in was that I could trust you. But you lied to me.” That was another part of the whole thing that stung. That Harry had believed so fervently that Dale could be fixed that he had been willing to essentially trick him into getting the surgery. All this time, Dale had known that he was unfixable, but he had still gone through with the surgery and done the ridiculous facial exercises and tried as hard as he could to get better for Harry. Not only had Harry deluded himself with false hope, he had made Dale complicit in that false hope.</p>
<p>“What does it matter? It’s just money.” Harry was still completely missing the point, and that just made Dale angrier.</p>
<p>“No, it’s not just money. It’s your entire life that you’ve thrown away. You left Twin Peaks, and then you left Missoula. You left your career in law enforcement. If I’m not mistaken, you spent the better part of five years on a drinking binge.” Even as he said it, Dale felt that was a particularly low blow, but he continued regardless. “And now you’ve put yourself tens of thousands of dollars in debt, which it will take you years to pay off at your current salary. What happened to me in Twin Peaks destroyed my life. It didn’t have to destroy yours too.” Now that he had finally said what he had been feeling all this time, Dale felt his anger dissipate.</p>
<p>But now Harry was angry. “You think I had a choice in that, in how that affected me? You have no idea what it was like for me.” His voice shook, either because he was trying not to shout or trying not to cry.</p>
<p>“All this past year, I’ve been trying to figure out why you would give up everything like that,” Dale said slowly. He could see the pieces of the puzzle slowly fall into place, just like he used to when a case came together. “At first, I thought it was because you felt responsible for what happened to me. And you know that I don’t have anywhere else to go, so you feel responsible for what happens to me now too.”</p>
<p>“You know that’s not why,” Harry said, barely above a whisper.</p>
<p>And suddenly, Dale did know. It was true that Harry had the most finely developed sense of duty and integrity of anyone he’d ever known, with compassion and kindness to match. But those weren’t the source of his devotion to Dale.</p>
<p>“Yes, I know now that it’s even worse than that. It’s because you’re my friend, and you care about me, or the person I used to be. And you just want your friend back.” Dale could see now that Harry had done what he had done out of love, pure and simple, and that was the most terrible thing of all. At least duty and kindness were their own reward. But loving something that was gone, that was only grief by another name. All this time, Harry had been grieving him, and he didn’t even know that’s what he had been doing. “But that person is gone,” Dale continued, as gently as he could. “And all that’s left is this scarred, broken shell.” Even though the scarring on his face was gone now, he could still feel it, under the surface. “It’s like I told Albert. I am a ghost. And that’s the most tragic thing in the world to be, because not only do I have to face all the things I’ve lost, but my presence also causes you pain. I have to watch every day as you get hurt because I’m not the person you want me to be. And I never will be.”</p>
<p>Dale could see the exact moment when he finally got through to Harry. But there was no victory in making Harry see what Dale had been trying to show him for months. Instead, it felt like defeat. Now Harry’s face reflected the same hollow feeling Dale had had all along. It was as if the darkness Dale had within him had finally exploded outward and Harry had gotten hit with the shrapnel. Dale had thought that the false hope that Harry had been harboring was what was making them both miserable. It turned out that seeing hopelessness in Harry’s eyes was much, much worse.</p>
<p>Harry turned away and left the apartment without saying anything. Filled with regret at what he had just done, Dale called his name. But the sound of Harry’s feet going down the stairs continued without pause. Dale let him go. That was what he had been trying to do all along, after all. Harry was now free of him.</p>
<p>The darkness seized Dale again, stronger than ever before. He felt it as physical pain so severe he couldn’t stand. He slid down the wall, resting his forehead on his knees. He didn’t know how long he stayed like that, empty and aching. All he had now were his demons for company.</p>
<p>Suddenly, something that felt like it was not entirely his own volition made him move across the room and reach under his mattress. He pulled out the origami owl he had stashed under there months before and then tried to forget about. He had kept it in case he needed evidence, to prove to himself that the Black Lodge was still within him. Staring at the owl, he wondered if he had done the right thing. Even if he had hurt Harry for now, surely it had been for the best in the long run. Now that Harry realized there wasn’t anything left of Dale to save, maybe he would be able to grieve and move on. At the same time, though, Dale felt instinctively that anything that could put that look of despair on Harry’s face had to be an evil. That was the biggest problem with the darkness that had taken over Dale’s mind. He couldn’t trust his own thoughts and feelings, because they weren’t really his. He remembered reading once about a parasitic fungus that invaded the central nervous system of ants, to hijack their behavior and so spread itself. That was what he had become, nothing but a host whose sole function was propagation of the darkness that infected him.</p>
<p>Looking up from the owl, Dale’s eye caught on various objects around the room. The fancy stainless steel coffee machine, perched awkwardly on the tiny kitchen counter. Harry’s binoculars and birding books over on the side table. The print of the photo of Harry that Dale had taken in the Palouse Hills, in its prominent place over Harry’s bed. Everywhere he looked, there was something that made him think of Harry and of the million ways he had taken care of Dale. Abruptly, Dale put on his shoes and coat, shoving the origami owl into his pocket, and headed for the door. He couldn’t stand being alone in the apartment anymore, with all those mementos of the strange little life that he and Harry had almost succeeded in building together.</p>
<p>Outside, the cold winter air stung against his skin in a fortifying way. Dale peered through the window of the bar downstairs from the apartment. Just as he had suspected, Harry was inside, sitting rather unsteadily on bar a stool with several empty shot glasses scattered in front of him. Dale quickly retreated from the window before Harry saw him. He was not surprised that Harry had gone to the nearest bar. Alcohol was his default coping mechanism. He had only stayed sober these past months for Dale’s sake. Now that he had given up on Dale, maybe he was ready to give up on everything else too, just like Hawk said had happened the last time. Once again, Dale felt a pang of guilt. Harry’s hard-won sobriety was yet another thing Dale had taken from him.</p>
<p>Feeling restless, Dale walked the long way around the block so he wouldn’t have to pass in front of the bar window and risk Harry seeing him. He knew with certainty that, as full of drink and despair as Harry was, if he saw Dale walking the streets alone at night, he would be sure to come after him. And Dale didn’t want Harry coming after him.</p>
<p>Dale let his feet lead him to the falls, drawn to it as always like water pulled by gravity. He wasn’t sure why, whenever his inner darkness got to be too much, his instinct was to seek out the greatest height he could find. It wasn’t as though he could take that leap now, not even after his fight with Harry. Especially not after that. Harry would think it was his fault. But he could stand there by the falls, listen to its roar, and contemplate the drop. Maybe he would find comfort in the fact that he still had the strength to resist the leap.</p>
<p>The park was dark in the winter’s premature night, so there was hardly anyone around. As Dale approached the falls, he saw that there was someone sitting on the bench by the overlook. He could just see the person’s silhouette, made bulky by their heavy coat, as they took a swig from a bottle. Initially, Dale assumed it was a homeless person. Then the person leaned forward into the halo of the streetlight, and Dale saw who it was.</p>
<p>“Evening, Dale,” said the old man from the Black Lodge. “Cold enough for ya?”</p>
<p>“Just leave me alone,” Dale said wearily.</p>
<p>“You used to be such a polite young man.” The old man shook his head in disappointment and drank some more from his bottle, which was wrapped in a paper bag.</p>
<p>Dale leaned against the railing over the falls. “I’m not in the mood for your games.”</p>
<p>“No games tonight. Just a farewell toast.” The man held the bottle high and drank again.</p>
<p>“Farewell?” Dale asked suspiciously.</p>
<p>“That’s right. This is the last time you’ll see me.”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“Cuz you don’t want to see me no more.” The man shrugged. “Don’t worry, I ain’t offended.”</p>
<p>“Since when does what I want matter?” Dale was getting a second wind on his anger. “I didn’t want to see any of the things I had to see. I didn’t want any of this. But it never matters what I want. You told me the Black Lodge will never let me go.”</p>
<p>“So I did. But that don’t mean you can’t <em>dislodge</em> it.” The old man chuckled at his own pun.</p>
<p>“How? How can I do that?”</p>
<p>The old man paused, taking a thoughtful sip. “It’s like that thing on that camera of yours.”</p>
<p>“What thing?” Dale was utterly mystified.</p>
<p>“The, you know, whatsit.” The man made a vague gesture. “I don’t know the proper terminology. Never had much use for gadgets myself. You know, the opening that lets the light in.”</p>
<p>“The aperture?” If anything, Dale was even more mystified.</p>
<p>“That’s the one.” The old man grinned. “It’s like that.”</p>
<p>“How is it like that?”</p>
<p>“You’ll see.” The old man stood up, and Dale was surprised to see how tall he was. He realized he had never seen the man stand before. As Dale looked up, the man seemed to loom larger and larger, until he must have been twelve feet tall. “Bon voyage,” the man said, and disappeared into thin air.</p>
<p>Dale shook his head and leaned back over the railing. He hoped that really was the last time he saw that maddening old man. The cold was quite intense now, and he shoved his hands into his pockets for warmth. His hand touched the delicate origami paper. On a whim, he took out the owl and released it over the falls. It fluttered gently for a moment before getting caught in the current and plunging down out of sight. Dale supposed he wouldn’t need it anymore, because he no longer cared whether what he was seeing were visions or hallucinations. It all amounted to the same thing.</p>
<p>Glancing back through the park toward downtown, Dale could see the lights of the bar spilling out onto the sidewalk. He suddenly felt foolish, standing out here alone in the cold while Harry was inside that bar trying to drink away his sorrows. Even if Harry was angry at him, even if Dale had finally succeeded in pushing Harry away, he still didn’t want Harry to suffer alone like he had for five years. He had to at least go make sure Harry was all right.</p>
<p>So Dale walked back to the bar and pushed the door open. He could see right away that Harry was severely inebriated, based on the way he was swaying in his bar stool. Harry’s back was to Dale, as he was apparently in the process of trying to get the bartender’s attention to order yet another drink. Dale reached out and put his hand on Harry’s shoulder, and was completely unprepared for the sharp pain of Harry’s fist colliding with his face. The punch had a rather impressive degree of accuracy and power given the condition Harry was in.</p>
<p>Dale took a couple of steps back, reeling from the impact. He could feel the metallic tang of blood gushing from his nose. Harry had gotten him good. Harry, meanwhile, had blearily realized who it was he had just punched in the face. He threw himself down off the barstool and put his head in his hands. Dale quickly dropped to his knees, grabbing Harry by his upper arms. He realized that Harry was crying.</p>
<p>“Harry, it’s all right,” Dale said, as calmly as he could. He wanted to comfort Harry, but it was a bit difficult while he was dripping blood onto the sticky floor of a bar that had just gone quiet as everyone stared at them. He tried to stand up and pull Harry up with him, but the combination of drunkenness and despair seemed to be keeping Harry firmly on the floor.</p>
<p>“Hey, I remember that guy now,” said the bartender, who had come out from behind the bar to see the commotion. He stared at Harry, the man he had been serving whiskey shots to nonstop for over an hour, as if he were looking at him for the first time. “He was in here back in the spring. Started a fight then too. Cops came and arrested him.”</p>
<p>The spring. That must have been when Dale was still at Medical Lake. Suddenly, Dale remembered those couple of days that Harry hadn’t come to visit him. When he had shown up again, in Dale’s room, he had had a black eye. It all made sense now. Desperately, he tried once again to get Harry to his feet. He wanted so badly to get him out of there, to get him home. Dale hadn’t been there to help him before, but he was there now.</p>
<p>The bartender started toward the phone behind the bar. “Well, I guess the cops will be happy to come pick him up again.”</p>
<p>“No.” Dale used his firmest tone. “He’s my friend. I’ll get him out of here.” He continued to struggle with Harry, with little success.</p>
<p>“With friends like that –” the bartender said dubiously.</p>
<p>“Perhaps a more productive way for you to spend your time would be to help me rather than to stand there making baseless judgments.”</p>
<p>“I’d rather just let the cops handle it.” The bartender was straying dangerously close to the phone again, so Dale thought fast.</p>
<p>“I’m sure the authorities will be interested to know that this is at least the second time in a year that you’ve sold alcohol to a visibly intoxicated person, which violates state law and may also result in civil liability.” The bartender froze. “Please, we live in the apartment upstairs,” Dale continued. “Just help me get him up there and you can continue with your evening.”</p>
<p>The bartender still seemed reluctant. “I got customers,” he said.</p>
<p>“It will take two minutes, and I’ll give you –” Dale tried to remember how much money was in his wallet upstairs— “twenty dollars.”</p>
<p>“Okay, deal,” the bartender said cheerfully.</p>
<p>Each of them took one of Harry’s arms, and between the two of them, they managed to half-drag, half-carry Harry out of the bar. The narrow stairway proved more difficult to navigate. Harry was of no help whatsoever. He had gone limp, and Dale wasn’t sure if he was even still conscious. When they finally reached the top of the stairs and Dale opened the apartment door, Harry suddenly got enough control of his faculties to break away and make a staggering lunge into the bathroom. The sound of retching came a moment later. Dale winced in sympathy and started toward the bathroom.</p>
<p>“Hey. My money?” the bartender demanded from the doorway. Dale had almost forgotten he was there.</p>
<p>“Right.” Dale grabbed his wallet and handed the man a twenty.</p>
<p>“He never paid his tab,” the bartender said pointedly.</p>
<p>Dale had no idea how much of a tab Harry had racked up, and he wanted to make the bartender go away as quickly as possible. So he pulled out all the bills he had in his wallet. It must have been over a hundred dollars, but he didn’t bother to count it. He just shoved the whole wad of bills over to the man, saying, “This should cover it. Keep the change.”</p>
<p>The bartender quickly counted the money, then smiled with the satisfaction of a man who had just been ludicrously overpaid. Over the sound of another round of vomiting coming from the bathroom, he said, “You guys have a good night,” and finally left.</p>
<p>Dale went into the bathroom. Harry was kneeling over the toilet bowl, bracing himself against the wall, as he threw up again. “Oh, Harry,” Dale said sadly, sitting down next to him. He rubbed Harry’s back, not sure what else to do. When Harry seemed to have finished, he leaned against the wall, looking pale and miserable. Dale stood up and got a glass of water and a damp towel for Harry. Harry accepted the glass and took a couple of sips, and Dale gently wiped down his face with the cool towel. After a moment, Harry sagged against Dale in exhaustion. Dale put his arm around him. It felt good to be close to Harry again. Harry apparently felt the same way as he leaned his head against Dale’s shoulder.</p>
<p>Just staying like that was tempting, but Dale didn’t want Harry to fall asleep on the floor and wake up with a sore back to go with his hangover. So he said softly, “Come on, Harry,” and stood up. Harry followed willingly, although Dale had to steady him to keep him from falling over. He led Harry back out into the main room and gently shoved him onto his bed. Dale took off Harry’s shoes, belt, and jeans, then rolled him onto his side in case he had to throw up again. At that thought, Dale went back to the bathroom and found a bucket to keep by the bed just in case. While in there, Dale caught sight of himself in the mirror. He had almost forgotten about the punch he had taken, but now he could see that the blood had dripped from his nose down his chin and all over his shirt. That was probably rather upsetting for Harry to see, so Dale quickly washed the blood off his face and changed into his pajamas.</p>
<p>When Dale came back out, Harry was crying again. He wasn’t making a sound, but his whole body was shaking, and his eyes were red and brimming with tears. “Harry, please,” Dale said, not sure what he was pleading for. He had no right to ask Harry to stop hurting, after all, when he was the one who had hurt him. So he just crawled onto the bed next to Harry. The narrow twin bed was in no way big enough for both of them, but Dale fitted himself in behind Harry, pushed up against the wall. He draped his arm across Harry’s ribs, letting his hand rest against his chest. Harry immediately interlaced his fingers with Dale’s.</p>
<p>Dale realized that he had never seen Harry this vulnerable before. The only other time he had seen Harry vulnerable at all was the night Josie died. Ever since Dale’s return, Harry had been so strong for him. Now, for the first time, Dale had to take care of Harry. The role reversal shook Dale out of the prison he had built for himself. He suddenly realized that he was crying himself now. Not silently, the way Harry was, but in loud shuddering sobs. He cried for Harry, because Harry was hurting, and Dale just wanted him to feel better. Dimly, he realized this must be the way Harry had been feeling for him all this time. And at that thought, Dale cried for the suffering he had endured himself. He felt that he was looking at himself through Harry’s eyes, and that shift in perspective enabled him to finally grieve everything he had lost. </p>
<p>At the sound of Dale’s sobs, Harry turned over to his other side so he could wrap his arm around him. Dale moved his free arm so that Harry’s head rested on his shoulder. “Coop, I’m sorry,” Harry said. “I just missed you so damn much.” Or maybe he said <em>miss</em>. His speech was slurred, so Dale wasn’t sure. But the difference in tense suddenly seemed to be a very important distinction. He knew Harry had missed him while he was gone. But Harry didn’t have to miss him anymore because –</p>
<p>“I’m here,” Dale said, almost to himself. Then again, louder. “Harry, I’m <em>here</em>.” And just like that, he was. It was like a tiny adjustment to his camera lens that suddenly made the whole scene snap into focus. He could see himself, as if in a mirror, but not one that showed the surface features of his old face or his new one. He could see him<em>self</em>. He had been there all along, and Harry had been able to find him even when Dale had been lost in the darkness. Now Dale could see the light, dawning like the golden hour. So he opened up and let the light in.</p>
<p>The light suffused him, and Dale could feel the darkness retreat. He could see it all now, himself and Harry and the light that bound them together. He was capable of love, and of letting himself be loved. He knew who he was. Harry had fallen asleep, but Dale stayed right where he was, feeling Harry’s soft curls against his cheek. He wasn’t going anywhere.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As the sky outside showed the first twilit hues of morning, Harry started to stir. Dale gently extricated himself so that he could go shut the blinds, which he had neglected to close last night. He figured Harry would have one hell of a hangover. While he was up, he went to the bathroom to wet a towel, since Harry had seemed to find it soothing the night before.</p>
<p>“Coop?” Harry’s voice was filled with anxiety upon waking to an empty room. Did he really think that Dale would have left him there like that?</p>
<p>“I’m right here, Harry,” Dale said quickly, returning with the towel and laying it gently against Harry’s forehead. He wanted to keep repeating that again and again, to reassure both Harry and himself. <em>I’m right here</em>. But he could tell by Harry’s pained grimace that his headache was indeed a formidable one, so he turned to head back to the bathroom, saying, “Let me get you some water and aspirin.”</p>
<p>But Harry caught his wrist and pulled him down to sit on the edge of the bed. “I hit you.” Harry sounded as defeated as Dale had ever heard him.</p>
<p>“It’s all right,” Dale said. He wanted to make light of it, say something like <em>you should see the other guy</em>. But he knew this wasn’t a joke to Harry.</p>
<p>“No, it’s not,” Harry choked out, inspecting the damage he had done. “The surgeon said you have to be careful to avoid blows to the face while you’re still healing. We should take you in for an examination. I might have really hurt you.”</p>
<p>“You didn’t.” Dale took Harry’s hand to stop him from poking at his face, but then kept holding it. “I’m fine. I promise.” It was the first time he had said that, because he hadn’t wanted to lie to Harry. But he wasn’t lying now.</p>
<p>“I didn’t know it was you. I never would have hurt you on purpose.”</p>
<p>Dale marveled that Harry thought he even needed to explain that. “Of course, you wouldn’t, Harry. I know that.” He got up to get Harry his water and aspirin. As Harry took it, Dale sat back down on the bed. “I hurt you too,” he said. “I’m sorry for what I said. It wasn’t true.”</p>
<p>‘What part wasn’t true?”</p>
<p>Dale paused for a moment. He didn’t know if Harry remembered anything of what had happened after they left the bar. But he knew with certainty that what he had experienced while they were crying and clinging to each other was real. It wasn’t a vision or a hallucination. He had seen himself in that soft golden light that Harry had given him, and it had been the first time he had recognized himself in all those years. But he didn’t have the words to express what he felt.</p>
<p>“That there’s nothing left of who I used to be,” Dale said in response to Harry’s question. “I thought there wasn’t, I really did. Ever since I – got out, I haven’t felt like myself. I haven’t felt much of anything, just numb. But last night, I was devastated to see you hurting like that. And I don’t think a ghost would be able to feel that. So I think I am still here, at least part of me. And I’ll keep trying to come all the way back, I promise. I won’t give up.”</p>
<p>“That’s all I ask.” Harry’s relief was evident that Dale was no longer hell-bent on giving up and leaving.</p>
<p>“But, Harry, you can’t give up either. Please, no matter what happens to me, I don’t want you to be self-destructive like that again.” It was Harry’s vulnerability the previous night that had precipitated Dale’s little revelation, but it was not the kind of experience Dale wanted to repeat.</p>
<p>“I won’t. I’m sorry you had to see me like that.” Harry ducked his head in shame. “I won’t do it again.”</p>
<p>Sensing that now was a better time for some levity, Dale said, “Well, if you like, I can get my hangover cure ready for you now.”</p>
<p>“Don’t you dare,” Harry said firmly, then grinned.</p>
<p>Seeing Harry smile at him just like he always used to, especially at one of their shared memories, made Dale suddenly yearn for the days when he could return the smile. He hadn’t even attempted something like that since his return, because it had seemed an impossible feat. But now it didn’t seem so impossible, so he boldly decided to try it. It took a conscious effort to remember how to coordinate all the different moving parts, but the smile felt good once it was in place. What felt even better was Harry widening his own grin in response. Judging from Harry’s pleased reaction, it had been an adequate first effort. And Dale now felt, for the first time in as long as he could remember, that there would be more to smile about in the future.</p>
<p>In the weeks that followed, Dale settled into a new equilibrium. At times, he could still feel the darkness lurking in some corner of his mind. There were still days when he felt grief or anxiety or despair. But there were now many more days when he felt content. There were still ups and downs, but his baseline had been lifted. Even better, the ups reached heights that he never would have thought possible. There were times now when he felt simple joy, untangled with any darker feelings. Times like when he and Harry sat and drank their morning coffee together, when Dale made unannounced visits to the food court during Harry’s lunch break just to see Harry’s face light up, when they spent the short winter evenings strolling along the riverbank watching the city sparkle. At those times, Dale felt the golden light within him, and he knew it was strong enough to guide him through any moments of darkness.</p>
<p>As promised, Harry did find them a house to rent, in the hills overlooking the city. Dale was happy to spend his days now designing the darkroom he would build and the garden he would plant. The spring thaw was still weeks away, and the darkroom wouldn’t be fully operational for months. But there was no rush. He enjoyed having a future to plan for. He spent a lot of time describing his design ideas to Harry, even though he knew full well that Harry had no opinion on the matter and would just tell him that whatever he had planned sounded fine. But Harry would still listen intently, half-smiling, because he got the message Dale was trying to convey to him. These weren’t just improvements to the house, they were investments in their home, and Dale was fully committed to staying and building that home with Harry.</p>
<p>On the morning they drove to see the frozen Palouse Falls, Harry kept looking at him in that way he sometimes did, like he just had to reassure himself that Dale was there. And every time he confirmed that Dale was in fact there, he visibly relaxed. At one point, he even squeezed Dale’s knee, as if needing tactile proof of Dale’s continued presence. Dale wasn’t sure why Harry was particularly emotional today, but he had days like that himself, when he had to stop and marvel at the fact that he really had come out on the other side of his ordeal.</p>
<p>They arrived at the waterfall overlook at the state park just in time for sunrise, and it was a magical display of light and ice. Dale was so captivated by it that he didn’t even see what the surrounding landscape looked like until he stopped to change his film. When he did, he was struck by the vista to the west. The earliest light of the day was just beginning to cast itself against a series of plateaus, stacked neatly one on top of another, stretching into the distance as far as the eye could see. Beneath the thin cover of windblown snow was the black contrast of basalt, a rock that Dale recognized because Harry had identified it for him on one of their previous expeditions. Other than that, the landscape was completely featureless.</p>
<p>“This place is incredible,” Dale found himself saying. “So barren, but so beautiful.”</p>
<p>“They call this area the Channeled Scablands,” Harry said.</p>
<p>Dale was intrigued by the poetry of the name. The land did look like it bore the fresh scars of some cataclysm. “Why is it so empty?”</p>
<p>“Because of the Missoula Floods. Remember when we went to Missoula, and we saw those bathtub rings on the hillsides above the UM campus?”</p>
<p>Dale did remember. The whole day they had spent in Missoula, he had been imagining Harry walking through its streets for five years, lost in grief. That was part of why he had wanted to see Missoula in the first place, so that he could better connect to what those years had been like for Harry. Distracted as he had been, he didn’t remember much about the town, but he did remember Harry pointing out the lake levels on the hills. So he nodded.</p>
<p>“Those were from Glacial Lake Missoula,” Harry went on. “It formed during the Ice Age, when the ice sheet that covered Canada dammed the Clark Fork River. It was a huge lake, bigger than some of the Great Lakes. But then, when the ice sheet was retreating, the ice dam was breached, and the whole lake drained and caused these catastrophic floods across eastern Washington and down into the Columbia River Gorge.”</p>
<p>Dale listened, attentive as ever to Harry’s natural history lessons. This part of the world was so exotic to him, but Harry was always able to make the landscape tell a story. “Those must have been some floods,” Dale said.</p>
<p>“Yeah, they scoured away all the topsoil here, right down to the bedrock. They left behind these coulees and gravel bars and ripple marks, like you would find on a river bed. We’re standing among them now, but we can’t see them because they’re so big. You can’t even tell what they are until you see them from above.”</p>
<p>As Harry described the view from above, Dale felt that he could see it. He imagined rising up to look at the Channeled Scablands from a bird’s-eye view. He could see the ancient river beds and oversized gravel bars and ripple marks. He could almost see the floods themselves, the tremendous volumes of water filling those channels, spilling over the basalt cliffs in calamitous waterfalls, setting car-sized boulders spinning like tops to drill potholes into the bedrock, carrying away the soil until there was nothing left. Then he looked at Harry and felt himself return to the scale of the everyday.</p>
<p>Feeling compelled to photograph the Scablands, Dale started framing some shots. “It’s good to know how a place got to be the way it is,” he said. “Everything is a product of its history. A catastrophe like that shapes everything that comes after. Like the canyon that the stream flows through now to make the waterfall. It wouldn’t be here if those floodwaters hadn’t stripped everything away.”</p>
<p>The lands that had seemed so empty just a moment before were now starting to fill with the golden light of the newly risen sun. Bathed in that light, they didn’t look nearly so barren. Dale knew that feeling well.</p>
<p>Harry usually let him go on taking pictures for as long as he wanted, but this time he called a halt after a few minutes. “Come on, Coop, put your gloves back on before you get frostbite. Time for a break.”</p>
<p>Dale hadn’t noticed it, but his hands were getting rather numb in the biting wind. As always, Harry knew what was best for him. As he pulled on his gloves, he was thankful to see Harry produce, as if by magic, a thermos – no doubt filled with hot coffee – from his backpack. Yes, Harry always did know exactly what was best for him.</p>
<p>“A hot cup of joe is just what I needed,” Dale said, taking the thermos. “You know, you’re all right, Harry.” He pulled his balaclava down from his face so he could drink the coffee. As he did, Harry suddenly broke into the widest grin Dale had ever seen from him. Dale only realized why a moment later, when he felt the position his own face was in. He was smiling, without even trying to, without even realizing that he had been, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.</p>
<p>As Harry took his hands, Dale saw, out of the corner of his eye, that the symphony of the sunrise had reached its crescendo. It was that perfect moment when the wavelengths resonated with their clearest and sweetest harmony, and the whole world breathlessly awaited the next ringing note. Normally, this would be the moment Dale was waiting for, when he would spring into action with his camera to capture the fleeting optics of that achingly brief instant. But now, he just stayed where he was, holding his coffee and Harry’s hands, seeing Harry’s smile and feeling his own. There was nothing to capture, but there was everything to experience. <em>This</em> was the perfect moment. This was the golden hour.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>